Planning with Purpose: Antonia Bowring’s Guide to ADHD Success

On today’s episode, we've got a returning guest, Antonia Bowring, an executive coach and author who's reshaping how we think about productivity in the ADHD community. In our pervious conversation we explored her journey writing 'Coach Yourself!' and today we will be diving into how she developed her ADHD Success Planner, and how these tools can help you manage daily tasks more effectively. Antonia breaks down her simple yet powerful three-part planning system designed to transform your weekly grind into a manageable flow.

William Curb: All right. Well, it's a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. It's been a while since our last one. We were just talking about how we were kind of like re listening to that episode and some of the things that were not as common then, but are much more common now, like body doubling and stuff. And it's just funny to listen to old stuff and be like, oh, man, this is new. That was new then. And now it's an old hat now.

Antonia Bowring: I know. I listened to it as well. And it was only actually a year ago, but you're right. I think I say the term body doubling about once a day. And there I was a year ago saying, William, have you heard of body doubling?

William Curb: Yeah. And we're like, oh, yeah. And there's people that actually pay for this. And I'm like, oh, I've had like three services that have approached me about doing advertising for the podcast about their body doubling service.

Antonia Bowring: Wow. I heard of one. I'm not plugging it, but I was on a call with a group the other day. And somebody mentioned an app called Groove. Have you heard of it?

William Curb: Yeah. The CEO from them came on the podcast six months ago.

Antonia Bowring: I gotta say, I am really impressed by both the caliber of guests you get. And now I get to put myself in that group and also the breadth, you know, you're doing a lot for this community. So thank you. Thank you.

William Curb: I appreciate it. So last time we were talking about your was that your first book?

Antonia Bowring: Yeah, it was.

William Curb: Coach yourself. And you were saying that. So now we're going to talk a little bit more about this ADHD success planner. And you were saying a little bit of go about how this kind of manifested from that first book.

Antonia Bowring: So when I wrote coach yourself, the advice I got from the publisher was, oh, you know, there's a lot of interest in ADHD. And if you can work some of that in, that's great.

And spoiler alert. It's also the platform I wanted to create because I'm, I guess this will be my third book. I'm very close to starting on a third book that's also going to be specifically about ADHD, but I can't say more yet. Although I will tell you, there is not one book on the market that covers what I'm going to cover.

But I built in some material. And what was fascinating was that was what podcast hosts and interviewers gravitated to was, oh, tell us about your ADHD journey. And somehow I started to talk about planning and prioritizing. And I was on one podcast in particular and the guy was like, do you have this written down? And I said, no, but I know it so well, this system. And I use it with quite honestly a lot of my clients, not just ones with ADHD.

And he was like, but this is so valuable for the ADHD community. You got to write it down. And so I thought, OK, I'm going to write it down. I'm just going to put it up on my website. I thought it would be nine pages, you know, don't freak out. People, if you haven't bought the book yet, but it's like 70 pages. And that's because it's very spacious and like a real easy read. But there's a lot to say to kind of make it accessible.

This system, it's not complicated, but to make it easy to use and also really reinforcing some of my messages around pick it up, put it down. Think of it as self care, use a bit of it, use all of it. Like, don't worry, anything you do is a step forward. So 72 pages later with, you know, a bunch of attachments and templates. The ADHD success planner is alive.

William Curb: Yeah, it is funny with what you were mentioning, too. Like, you know, you didn't have it written down because it's just kind of like in your brain and like one of the things that like would making me laugh while reading through it with this like, I strongly recommend using a calendar. And I'm like, I mean, that's great advice. But I just can't imagine not using a calendar. So it's like almost never occurs to me to like recommend a calendar because I'm just like, well, of course you're using a calendar. How would you survive without your calendar?

Antonia Bowring: William, I don't know what the right verb is. Horrified, upset, distressed to know how many folks out there don't use one.

William Curb: Yeah. I'm just like, oh, how do you I know get to things?

Antonia Bowring: I don't know. I know. I agree. Like a calendar isn't even in the system because it's like ground zero. You have to have one and be using one. But the most important thing for me about writing this, because I use the system like really religiously, and I'm going to walk through in a couple of minutes, like what the components are, because it's so simple. But my new mantra is for one part of the ADHD journey, which is the planning and prioritizing, right? There's only two things you need to move forward.

One, get it out of your head and onto. I'm going to say paper could be electronic. I have a strong bias towards paper. Get it out of your head and written down. That's one. And number two, in a place that you can find, if folks just did those two things, they could move forward with more ease. Now, we could add lots of bells and whistles on that, prioritizing and, you know, urgency and importance and bucketed Len and daily, weekly. But those two concepts are at the essence of this.

William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because I know I can't trust something coming out of my head when I need it. Laundry is a great example of their like, I should be able to remember that. But it's, you know, that's something I will forget. And fortunately, that's very low stakes. I can just run the washer if I leave it in there a couple of days. Not that I ever have the washer free that long.

It's just this never ending cycle. But I have to be able to get it out of my head so that I can organize it. Yeah, like one of the things I loved in the like introduction of the book was just the like, if you can't plan, you can't prioritize. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Because if you're not aware of everything that's happening, you can only prioritize based on like what's most urgent next. And that's can work for some time, but that is how you get burned out.

Antonia Bowring: Yes, exactly. That is how you get burned out 100%.

William Curb: And so then I really like the next part that we just like. And so think of planning as vital self care. And I'm like, yes.

Antonia Bowring: If there's one message in the book besides get it out of your head, write it somewhere where you can find it is that I want to reframe this all as self care. Because you and I talked when I was on last time that I think of the ADHD journey as both profound and practical and the two intersect, right? And I think of it and it makes me just feel so sad that folks with ADHD, particularly adults who have, well, really anyone, but I have a special affinity for adults who are like get a late diagnosis, that you go through life and every day there are like these cuts you get like, like little paper cuts, you know, and one little paper cut doesn't really affect your health, right?

But when you get lots of them every day for weeks, months, years on end, they start to really affect your health. And that all those times when you don't do something you think you should have done and you feel whatever that micro piece of shame, all those things, that is so destructive for our sense of self, for our confidence. And the practical piece is so linked to this because if we can find some peace with making some practical progress day to day, I truly believe that carries over into the profound piece of this journey. It's not the whole profound piece, but it helps us build confidence in ourselves, in our abilities, in our ability to be reliable. And so that's why I think planning and prioritizing is truly an act of self care.

William Curb: Yeah, because it doesn't feel good when you're not doing the things you're supposed to be doing or even not doing the things you want to be doing. You're just kind of treading water and trying to keep your head above and it's that it feels awful. And so being able to have this like moment to be like step back and figure out what needs to happen while it feels like you don't have the time to do it. It's vital to do because if you don't do it, you're just going to keep doing that treading water thing.

Antonia Bowring: Well, you know, this is not a perfect analogy, but we read a lot about having organized work spaces is good for our mind, right? It kind of lowers cortisol when your environment is not chaotic. There's a fair amount written about that. But the thing we kind of forget is, well, no one's desk or work area stays perfectly organized all the time. You actually have to invest time in putting it into an organized state. And then in a week, revisiting that and cleaning it up again.

I think that analogy works with planning and prioritizing. It doesn't happen miraculously. It takes time and effort. And my goal is that folks see that time as not a pain in the neck, not as something they're doing for someone else, but they're actually doing it for themselves. So they feel more in control, calmer and approaching the week ahead or the day ahead with more self confidence.

William Curb: Because it's one of the things, yeah, you don't do it. It's also hard to imagine when you're in that treading water state that there's anything you can do about it. And so doing this process where it's like, OK, I can do something about how I feel. I can get myself into a place where I feel OK about doing something, at least getting forward to progress without being overwhelmed.

Antonia Bowring: Would it be helpful, William, if I just literally spent like a few minutes and walked through the pieces of it?

William Curb: Let's talk about the three parts of the system.

Antonia Bowring: So, OK, calendar. It's not part of the system. You got to have one. You got to use one. That is ground zero. Step one, every week you have a planning session for the week ahead. You pick the day. You pick the time. I have recommendations of when I think it's most viable. I think it's like Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon or, but it could be whenever works for you in your schedule. Do it with a nice coffee. You've got your calendar. You've got your notes.

When you've been doing this a while, you'll have last weeks, documents, and you sit down and I can do it in under half an hour now. I do it every weekend and I just do mine on paper. I don't even use the templates I provide in the book. And what you do in that half hour is step two. So first you got to have that time. Step two, you create the weekly planning buckets. And you could think of that as like batch processing or categorizing to do's because the worst thing is a laundry list of to do's that aren't prioritized. It aren't organized that just cause more chaos in our mind, right?

Even if they're written down. So what you do is you have four, five, six buckets. I call them containers and you label them. And then you put down a few important to do's in that container. So for example, I will tell you I have an admin bucket and this week I have in there to do one of the things I hate most in the world, submit healthcare reimbursement document. Okay. That's on my list to do for this week. There's a few other things. I'm just giving you an example.

I have some things about the ebook actions I need to take this week, people I need to contact, podcast hosts I want to reach out to that's under that. So by the end of your half hour, you have this completed set of weekly planning buckets with some items in them. And you probably also want to say, what are the three or four top things that are like, gotta do this coming week. But the key thing is you don't link them to days. You don't have to do that. It's just an arc of the week that you're presenting.

And you're really using the week as your organizing principle. And there's something about it that in my experience and with my clients, really works a month is too long, but a week is just right. And you create a to-do list every day of the week that's built off your weekly planning buckets and the items in them. And other things may flow in like somebody at work asks you to do something do tomorrow. Of course, that's going to get added to your to-do list. But with those three components, you can really take control of your week.

William Curb: So I'm thinking here too about these buckets. Like, is it better to have them like a bit more specific or are they kind of more general and like what works kind of best for building those buckets?

Antonia Bowring: So this system is incredibly flexible because I don't know your brain specifically, right? I have some clients who only put two or three to-dos in these buckets because they need to be able to tick everything off. I have other clients who might have 10 things in a bucket and they kind of know they won't get them all done, but they like having them there. And that doesn't stress them out.

So it's very individual. I, for example, used to just have a bucket that was clients, right? And then I realized, uh, it's too big a bucket. I've got like 12 things in it. What if I broke it down into group coaching, executive coaching and special projects? You got to make it work for you. So it's hard for me to say, like, should you William have an admin bucket or should you have a home admin work admin? Kind of depends on you.

William Curb: Yeah. So just as long as you're not creating buckets that are overflowing with tasks.

Antonia Bowring: Yeah.

William Curb: So you have these buckets and what's our next step?

Antonia Bowring: Well, one other thing I want to say, of course, let's say, William, you and I were just talking about you making a presentation at the recent ADHD conference, right? In California. So you probably knew you were doing that in the middle of the year. So that's important. That may be so far ahead. Like there's nothing you're going to do for a couple of months. You do need to make sure that's on your calendar, right?

But let's say it's two months from now and you know they have a deadline of when you have to give them your deck. Let's say it's a month before. You're going to be scanning your calendar at least a quarter ahead because there may actually be something this coming week that you need to do like a step goal that will ladder up that ultimate goal of finishing your presentation. So it can also be in your weekly planning buckets, step goals to complete for goals that are out there weeks or months, right? So that's just an important reminder. The arc of the week is important, but we are of course looking more forward and that's where the calendar comes in.

So after you've done the week, it's Sunday, I've done it with my coffee, then I do a to-do list for Monday. And the to-do list is so easy because I kind of know the arc of the week, right? In the book, I give three different versions of a daily to-do, a very detailed one by like half hour increments, one by hour increments, and the one that's just AM/PM, right? Again, variety, choice, and the most key part of the daily to-do list is let's pretend it's Monday night and I'm doing my to-do list for Tuesday. I go through it at the end of the day, I look at what I got done, I carry over what I didn't do that I still need to do tomorrow, I add in anything else.

It's under 15 minutes. The key thing though is, and I know this sounds obvious, but a lot of us overload our daily to-do list, if you have six hours of meetings, your to-do list should reflect that, right? I actually like to put my meetings in and I actually like list the things to do and then actually slot them in calendar in time blocks, but if I have six hours of meetings, I'm only going to get a few to-dos done, so I'm just setting myself up for disappointment and unhappiness if I have 20 to-dos that I can't possibly get done tomorrow. So this system allows you to take into account what's already scheduled and the time that's truly available for you to do your to-dos.

William Curb: One thing that was coming up to me when I was reading through it, who was thinking about even with those reminders of like, okay, you can only fill in this amount of time, I do have this tendency to be like, I feel like, oh, I have to do all of these things. There's no way I'd be like, well, these all are things that have to get done and they all have to get done in the next two days. Probably not in reality, but that's how it feels. What are some strategies to try and kind of avoid that over-scheduling of yourself or over-committing?

Antonia Bowring: Let me give you an example. I am trying to sign up for a conference and there's something wrong with it won't accept my password onto the website. Now, this conference is in March. I just want to get this done because it's really bugging me and I want it off my list. I actually don't have to get it done.

As long as I keep it on my weekly buckets list, it won't disappear because if I'm relying on my mind to remember it, it will disappear. I think we do need to have a discussion with ourselves. Where we say, okay, is this really something that there's a consequence if it isn't done within the two days? Or is that a self-imposed deadline? We have to have a kind of negotiation with ourselves and really figure out like, is it more important to have dinner with your family or then go through and complete some to-dos that actually don't have to be done by any external measure the next day.

But there's something about you want to get them done. Now, I just want to say one more thing, which is we live in an incredibly demanding work world. People are super overburdened and a lot of people don't have control over their calendars, particularly at work.

Things get put on, taken off. It's a stressful work world. What I'm saying is my system can't eliminate that, but what it can do is give you back some of the control over the time that you can manage for yourself.

William Curb: I think this also goes back to one of the things we started off with at the beginning with if you're not planning, then you're not prioritizing. Often when we jump into planning, it's because we're feeling overwhelmed and we need something. And so we're usually going to have these initial growing pains of getting into a system because we're not at a good equilibrium yet.

Antonia Bowring: Right. I can give you an example of I decided. So something that's very important to me is I just want to be or informed. I want to be better read about all aspects of ADHD. And it's really hard to find time to read. And I can't read at night. I'm too tired. You also need to know your body and sort of when you're in the flow. And so I had to actually start really small. I really liked that guy. BJ Fogg wrote Tiny Habits.

I started really small with just a chapter in the morning. But that was how small I needed to start to work it into my calendar for it to start to become more of routine or ritual. This system helped me do it. I don't do it every day, but it goes in my weekly buckets. And I write it into my to-do almost every day. And that helps make it more of a potential reality.

William Curb: Yeah, this just sounds like this is just an issue of prioritization here too. And figuring out what's important to us. So what are some of the ways that people can work on prioritizing things?

Antonia Bowring: Let's stay with this reading example for a minute. I think one thing is you need to have a little conversation with yourself about, well, what's getting in your way? Now, do you know what I learned was getting in my way with reading? Fascinating. It took me a little while to figure this out. My mother definitely had ADHD, of course, undiagnosed. Reading was seen as unproductive in my household.

Reading was seen as something you did when you weren't working. And it was for pleasure. And you only did it for 10 minutes before you crashed and slept. I had to unwind a whole bunch of internal messages that reading was not work. Reading was not productive. So what messages are we telling ourselves about why we say something is important, but we actually can't live it?

William Curb: Yeah, I think that's incredibly important to work on reframing what's important to our lives. Especially in terms of like, is this productive or is this something that's going to help me thrive as a person?

Antonia Bowring: It's funny you say that because last night I was doing a little year-end, like, look back, look forward reflection exercise with a group of women who are neurodiverse executives. And what was the theme through everyone's comments about reflections on 2024 and what they want to build into 2025? Balance. Right? Like, kind of that sense of self-care, prioritizing the right things, finding the space for family and things that, and not just working all the time. And so you can actually also use this system to be productive in how you create balance in your life, right?

William Curb: Absolutely. So for me last night I went and did a board game night with some of the other dads in my neighborhood.

Antonia Bowring: Oh, that's so great.

William Curb: Yeah. And I was just like, while I was like walking back to my house last night at like 11 p.m., which is way after my bedtime usually.

Antonia Bowring: I totally get it.

William Curb: I was like, but I'm in such a good mood after having done four hours of just playing these games with these guys. And then it really reiterated in my own head how important it is to do that kind of stuff. Well, this is not productive. This is incredibly important that I am doing this so that I am a functional human.

Antonia Bowring: Yeah. Thanks for saying that. We have to take care of all aspects, right? And we can easily go down rabbit holes and sort of hyper-focus on something and forget about time. Or we can struggle at getting something done and we won't let go of it because we feel we have to finish it and can also be about forgiveness and self-care and self-nourishment and say, actually, this is another part of myself I need to take care of because we know with ADHD all those keystone habits, all those, I like to call it like having your four wheels on the ground, you know, sleep and exercise and self-care and mindfulness, those cascade into all other parts of life to make us mentally and physically happier and more stable.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's like, oh, yeah, if I don't do these things that are going to make me a happy person, I mean, what's the point then? Like I'm just miserable working. Like, why am I doing that? You say it out loud and you're like, oh, that doesn't make sense. I need to do these, this is why I am doing these things, is so I can do these other things.

Antonia Bowring: Or nourishing different parts of you, right?

William Curb: Yeah. One of the most important parts of prioritization is figuring out what's actually important to you, why it's important to you and being real clear that it does not need to stay in this like typical productivity mindset of like, well, if I'm not working, it's not important.

Antonia Bowring: Right. And you know, to go from a conversation about productivity to the comment I'm going to make, really, really what it's all about is, who do you want to be?

William Curb: Absolutely.

Antonia Bowring: Everything ladders up to that. And Atomic Habits, James Clear wrote something like that in his book. Like, that's what habits are. And in a way, that's what we're talking about, right? Like, planning and prioritizing as routines or rituals or habits, pick your noun. Who do you want to be?

Do you want to be someone that is calmer at the start of the week? Someone that people rely on? Which is, by the way, a hugely important aspect of leadership, right? If you manage other people or lead other people. Who do you want to be? That's what it kind of is all about. But that gets a bit lofty.

William Curb: Yeah. But I mean, doing this like planning work, you can then be like, who do I want to be? And then be intentional about building that life.

Antonia Bowring: Yes, exactly.

William Curb: Well, we'll always be someone. It's just, are we being the person we want to be? It would be intentional about it then.

Antonia Bowring: Intention is a really good word.

William Curb: Yeah. And it's something that's really hard with ADHD sometimes, because we get that impulsivity and really, this is the cool thing I'm going to do. And...

Antonia Bowring: It's hard. And you know, William, it is hard. And you said this actually when we talked last on. We like bright, shiny objects. We get bored. It's okay to change systems. It's okay to change notebooks. It's okay to change apps. No judgment, right? It's awesome if you take the whole ADHD success planner and use it. But you know what? Sit down for half an hour and think about your week ahead. That's a step.

Just try one of the to-do lists. Like any piece of it. And none of us, we don't want our thoughts of perfection to get in the way of the possible. It's okay to just start over. That's the whole point of mindfulness and meditation. You just start over with the next breath or with the next planning bucket.

William Curb: Giving yourself the grace to do so.

Antonia Bowring: Yes. Have a calendar. Part one of it is your weekly planning session. Part two is the weekly planning buckets and what goes in them. And part three is your daily to-do list. And I give a bunch of variations. And there's a lot more detail and case studies. And I give you examples of people using these systems and there's lots of hacks and ideas. But that's the basic system that's so adaptable.

William Curb: This did remind me of one of the things that I had was thinking about too. Like a corner stone of this is putting this in your calendar so that you know when this is coming up. But I also know we have a tendency to see things on our calendar and be amazed when they just shoot by because we haven't gotten up off the couch. So what are some strategies to sticking with this plan on planning?

Antonia Bowring: I want to share with you a little story here. I had a client who was really enjoying using the system. Her biggest problem was finding the time on the weekend because kids events, weekends tend to be moving targets for lots of people. And how we resolved this in her case was actually a concept from Tiny Habits which is stack things.

You're much more likely to do something that you stack on top of something you already do. Now in her case, Allison was a very regular and enthusiastic churchgoer. She went every Sunday morning without fail. And so the strategy for her was to do her weekly planning session at the back of church when it was over because that worked. She could predict her schedule and she was not only stacking but stacking it on something she liked to do.

So that's kind of a nice story. It won't work for everyone. But I think it is looking with a little bit of intentionality at your weekend. If you have a spouse or a significant other or family members, like letting them know, I need to find 30 minutes to do X, can we figure out a time now before? So people are aware that it's important to you. You say it out loud and it gets scheduled that way.

And reinforcing, you can also bring in extrinsic. So if I do this in the morning, I want to get up and do this before I go to my exercise class or I want to have a really great cappuccino at a cafe and do this. Or how do you reward yourself? How do you motivate yourself? Those are a few ideas.

William Curb: Awesome. Well, I was wondering if there were any final ideas you wanted to leave the audience with?

Antonia Bowring: I think just two. One is any step forward is a step forward. And celebrate it and note it and say, good job, William. Good job, Antonia. We got to do that for ourselves. We got to celebrate those little victories because they add up. And when we're feeling like there's no progress or we're feeling not good about how we're showing up, that's okay. Take a few deep breaths and say, it'll be better later today or I've got this. We can always recover from a downward dip. And then finally, I would just say, try this planner because it really works.

William Curb: And if they wanted to find this planner, where should they go?

Antonia Bowring: If they go to my website, it's easy to find the link on the drop down ADHD tab. And it's less than the cost of a latte in New York City, ab-strategies.com

William Curb: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think people will get a lot out of all these ideas on how to work with planning and with prioritization, which are always things that even having done it for a long time, I can still struggle with.

Antonia Bowring: Well, thank you for having me. And again, thank you for what you do for this community. And I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about a topic I'm very passionate about.

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Acknowledge the calendar as the foundation of effective planning; it’s non-negotiable for keeping track of tasks and appointments.

2. View planning not just as taking care of a task but as a vital form of self-care that helps manage stress and improves reliability.

3. Embrace self-forgiveness and adaptation. Allow yourself the flexibility to change planning methods and forgive missed tasks to maintain motivation and effectiveness.