I Need a To Do System
Like a lot of people with executive function quirks I’ve tried and failed at a lot of tasks management systems. The initial excitement of a new thing eventually leads to forgetting to use it. There are some methods that have consistently worked for me (Inbox Zero, visible reminders, SMART goals) but a lot that hasn’t.
At the same time, thanks to You Need a Budget (YNAB), I’ve been able to keep a consistent, balanced budget for years and make a lot of progress on financial goals. So how can I take what works for me about YNAB and apply it to tasks?
The two major benefits of YNAB for me are:
1) Everything is assigned out. Giving every dollar a “job” means I always know where my money is and what it’s going to be doing.
2) Flexibility. Because every dollar is account for its easy to switch its usage—if I got more takeout than groceries, I can just move the money from groceries to cover it.
Those are both things I can bring over to any system I develop. However there are some major challenges for tasks vs. money:
1) My dollars are finite, my tasks are not. With an infinite amount of tasks, I could spend more time assigning them and categorizing them than actually doing them.
2) Budgeting for time in a day is tricky. ADHD makes me pretty time blind, so I don’t have a great sense of how long tasks actually take me. One of the things that makes sticking to a system hard for me is putting too many tasks on a list and only having the time/focus to do one. A to do list you can never check items off of becomes demoralizing and useless.
Those are some big blockers, but I’ve thought through some ways to combat it and part of it comes down to using ADHD against itself. My solves are:
1) Time boxing the list. A fairly common and obviously solution, but if I limit the list to a day, I can “budget” the tasks for that day.
2) Focus on an ideal day, don’t worry about hours. Instead of trying to nail everything down to the hour, if I plan my ideal day what areas am I accomplishing tasks in? I’m going to take those areas and budget tasks for them, rather than trying to prioritize a whole list.
3) Don't worry about the size of the task. With my brain, if I kickstart it in to working it usually keeps going. A small task (for me) like “reply to an email” can easily kickstart doing other tasks. What matters is getting going, not what the action is.
With all that in mind, I thought about what kind of things I would be doing during my ideal week day--besides actual work, what areas will I feel better if I budget time for? This is what I came up with:
Exercise
Taking Care of Business (chores, returning phone calls, etc)
Work
Cooking (mostly with WFH right now, subject to change if I have to commute again)
Personal Development / projects (this includes just reading a book, basically time away from mindlessly scrolling or playing phone games)
For each of these I have an initial amount I want to budget per day. The amount budget might change over time, but I want to start small and gather data about what adjustments need to be made.
If this works, an ideal week day work look something like this:
Checking over my budgeted tasks for the day and adjusting / prioritizing as needed
Working on the tasks in whatever order makes sense for me
Move any additional tasks worked on to the days budget
Accounting for the day by adding new tasks, and budgeting for the next day
In a perfect situation I would also be noting what does or doesn't work and gauging effort / time in order to improve the budgets for each area, but to start I want to keep this as light and easy as possible.
With this system in mind, I'm going to be figuring out what tool would work best for this. There are a couple of paid options I'm considering trialing, but I may find that doc or spreadsheet or whiteboard works better. Then all I have to do is....dump my entire brain into it, categorize it, and give it a go.
I'm going to post check-ins at likely a very inconsistent cadence but we'll see!