Time Management for ADHD: Planning Your Day

by | Dec 2, 2022

I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 47. For nearly five decades, I lived completely unaware that my unreliable motivation and focus had a medical reason. Shame and deadline anxiety were my primary coping mechanisms. And I became reasonably successful despite many setbacks.

But it all came crashing down at the beginning of the pandemic.

Suddenly, my painstakingly compartmentalized, externally structured work, family, and community commitments all got smashed into one messy pile with no boundaries.

For the first time in my life, I saw with perfect clarity my ADHD for what it was — a disability!

Shame and anxiety were no longer even remotely effective and instead were making things worse. Much worse!

I needed a new system. A system that would support me where I required support and get out of the way everywhere else. So, I set out to create one.

Requirements

But first, to better understand the requirements for such a system, I’ve researched the neurobiology of ADHD. I found that ADHD:

  1. disables working memory, makes it challenging to keep things in memory

  2. creates time blindness, a difficulty to estimate time

  3. decreases motivation for boring, repetitive, or non-urgent tasks, leading to procrastination until the last moment

  4. makes it difficult to plan ahead

With all that in mind, I decided that my new system had to meet the following requirements:

  • MUST be embarrassingly simple to understand and use — no revolutionary new ideas, no complicated concepts, just a straightforward boring system that works. I knew it had to be effortless if I wanted to use it, even on days I was completely unmotivated.

  • MUST make time more visible. I often imagine I can do more than what’s realistic in a single day. The system must make it painfully obvious what I can fit in a day and help me make better choices.

  • MUST support both meticulous planning and sketching out rough ideas. Some days, I have specific goals and know exactly what needs to happen. On other days, I’m okay with playing it by ear, like when the kids don’t have school, and my plans become vague.

  • SHOULD be possible to use the system with or without any special tools, digitally or on a napkin. I love my iPad, but I also appreciate the clarity of thought I get away from digital distractions.

  • SHOULD allow me to plan for the entire family.

  • COULD integrate into existing productivity systems without additional steps. (But I spent a couple of decades trying to pull this off and knew it would be difficult, so I was okay with letting it go.)

  • COULD allow me to share my plans with other family members.

Results: 24-h Time Circle

Here’s what I came up with. The image below shows a plan for my fairly typical Friday:

IMG_6080

My entire day fits on a single 4" x 6" index card, and it only takes me a minute to complete. (Download the printable template here.)

The 24 sectors of the circle represent 24 hours of the day. The shaded areas are the tasks and events. If I'm not sure how long a task is going to take, I leave a little bit of space around it. And there's enough room on the circle for overlapping events that might be happening simultaneously, but don't take my time.

So, let's see how I did:

  • Embarrassingly simple to understand and use — ✅
  • Make time more visible — ✅
  • Support both meticulous planning and sketching out rough ideas — ✅
  • Possible to use the system with or without any special tools—I print a stack of these cards a couple of times a year, so I'm almost never out, but even if I couldn't find one, I could always just draw a circle on a napkin — ✅
  • Plan for the entire family—there's enough room on the circle for multiple overlapping events, so family events could go there as well — ✅
  • Integrate into existing productivity systems without additional steps—unfortunately, transferring events from the index card to my calendar does require additional steps (fortunately, it's not a frequent need) — ❌
  • Allow me to share my plans with other family members — ✅

So, my system meets one out of 7 requirements—not bad!

Using The 24-h Time Circle

Here’s how I use it, step by step:

  1. Start by jotting down everything I want to accomplish today on the back of the card.

  2. Open my digital calendar and copy over any pre-existing tasks and events to the circle.

  3. For each task I jotted down on the back of the card, estimate how long it will take and find a suitable spot on the circle. (Schedule the most important tasks during the most productive hours for extra points!)

  4. Cross out any tasks I couldn’t fit on the circle.

  5. Create reminders if desired (Siri on my Apple Watch makes this step trivial).

The Time Circle works because it matches how ADHD brains actually work. No more time blindness! You can literally see your day on a page. The circle shows at a glance what fits and what doesn't.

What makes this system powerful is its simplicity. You don't need fancy apps or complicated rules. Just draw a circle, shade in your commitments, and go. Each completed section gives you a quick win - that dopamine hit ADHD brains crave.

Best of all? This isn't about forcing yourself to become "normal." It's about creating a tool that works with your brain, not against it.
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