Yes, You Need A Real Schedule

Create a "good enough" scheduling system that works with you, not against you. This grounded approach helps you move past the trap of perfectionism, using simple, external tools to stay consistent and reduce the friction of daily life with ADHD.

Transcript

All right. Section five. We are. Over the halfway mark. We are more than halfway there. So let's talk about how to sharpen your tools, Right? Schedules, To-do lists, Kind of things like that. How to make them more effective so they work better for you. Right now here, We're going to be talking about, Yes, You need a real schedule, Meaning something that you use consistently, Something that works well for you, Something to kind of track the stuff that you need to do, And when it is that you need to do it. So. . . I have this kind of saying, I use this for the folks who tell me like, Oh, I just remember what I need to do. And, You know, What I tell people is if you can remember everything you have going on in your life, Then you don't have enough going on in your life. Right. Like, Seriously, The only way to remember it all. Is to basically have like. . . One thing a day, Maybe. So I think for most people, By the time you get to like middle school or high school. It's just probably gotten past the point that you can remember everything like accurately and easily. Having some sort of a schedule just means that you got a lot of cool stuff going on. So not bad. Um You know, In terms of schedules, I mean, There's all sorts of different ways of doing it. There's, You know, Electronic ones, There's paper ones, There's like, You know, All sorts of fancy apps and whatever. But at the end of the day, There's no like magic bullet out there. There's no like perfect, Amazing whatever that's going to all of a sudden like, You know, Solve all your problems. And, You know, Like I said before in the kind of an earlier video, What exactly is getting in your way here is that, Any of these sort of alarms or to-do lists or schedules or whatever, They increase planning, Hopefully, And they increase awareness, Hopefully, But they don't necessarily, Or they don't at all increase motivation, Right? So there's no perfect solution here. We still need to be the one who does the work. But the goal then is to create a good enough system and then just use it. And I say this because I've talked to a whole bunch of people who. . . I don't know, Like they get kind of caught up in, You know, Like six shades of blue for the different levels of priority and blah, Blah, Blah. Right. And they sort of they like make perfecting their schedule into its own sort of distraction. Right. It's its own sort of time waster to sort of mess around with their schedule or the to do list or the new app or whatever. So, You know, My advice is because, Again, I tend to be much more about functional is figure out something that works like good. Enough and then just use it just use it and move on with your life maybe there's some refinements along the way but like don't make yourself nuts on this and don't spend more time on it then it saves you to have it The reason why this is important is that every time you use one of these things, Even if, Again, Not perfect, But every time you use something like a schedule is a little bit better than not using it, Right? Every time you put something in, Every time you look at it to see what you need to do, You're a little bit better informed and you're definitely a little bit more likely to do the right thing at the right time. Not doing it, Right, When they're like, Oh, I didn't put that in my schedule, Or like, Oh, I didn't look, Is, You know, How do you let yourself off the hook of using your schedule? How do you talk yourself out of it? When you had the thought, I should put this into my schedule, Or this is a thing that I would put into my schedule, How do you talk yourself out of it? You're like, I don't have to do it now, Or I'll just remember it. Like, What are you telling yourself in that moment? Or when you don't pull out your schedule and look at it, Again, What are you telling yourself? How do you sort of justify that to yourself so to notice it so that you can begin to kind of talk back to it, So to speak? So a schedule then. . . Basically, It's like, What are you doing and when are you doing it? And it's really hard to do the right thing at the right time if you're not really sure what it is you're supposed to be doing at this time. Now, Hopefully you have a clock so you know what time it is. But again, Like the more you use your schedule, The better it works. And I say this because I think for a lot of folks with ADHD, You've probably gotten a bunch of lectures about using a schedule and other people use them. And somehow it's made into this like moral issue or something that you're not using a schedule enough. And boy, Would it solve all your problems and blah, Blah, Blah. Right. So you probably have a lot of bad feelings about using a schedule. You use a schedule because it makes your life easier, Right? Having a schedule helps you achieve your goals and what's important to you. So just because other people have opinions and seem to have agendas about it, Don't let that be a reason why you don't do the things that are going to be best for you. Even if you only use it some of the time, That's still tangibly better. I'm going to keep saying that line. The other benefit of having a schedule is every time you look at it is a quick reminder of like what else is coming. So the more you look at your schedule, The better your memory is. But your memory wouldn't be as good if you didn't check the schedule, You know, With some sort of consistency. The other thing that I would recommend is to make your schedule more useful and therefore more likely that you're going to use it is to add various useful notes. So, For example, If you have an appointment somewhere, Don't just put in the thing itself, But put in like travel time, Put in the address, Put in the phone number, Put a note that says bring this, You know, Any other information that you might need. Paperwork or whatever, Right? Put in a little bit of extra work up front when you put the appointment in to add all that stuff in so that, Again, You have more positive experiences with your schedule so you're more likely to continue to use it. Now, In terms of schedules, As much as, You know, Like for years and years, I used a paper schedule book. As a psychologist, I liked it, The big thing where I could see the whole week. Then I moved over to an electronic one, And I wondered why it took me so long to go electronic. I mean, They're both good, Right? Paper schedules for some people, Great. Like it doesn't matter. Just use what works. You know, What's nice about a paper schedule is it's really simple and it's really fast to scribble something in. Is if you lose it you're kind of screwed because it's all gone um whereas electronic schedules i mean i think they're pretty easy at this point but some people just don't like them um but they're much more robust they have a lot more features they're backed up you can access them all over like i don't know i think it It's hard to make a good case for paper schedules. But again, Some people love them. And if it works for you, Then that's what you should do. People who don't have a lot of schedule tasks, Right, That they do stuff, But it's pretty regular and they don't need it in their schedule, Are probably best served by using an electronic system, So something on their phone, And setting a bunch of alarms. Because if you don't have a lot of need to look at your schedule, You're not going to look at it in time to see that you had that dentist appointment three weeks. You know what I mean? So. So definitely using not only a schedule, But setting the alarms. Or if you really like having a paper schedule, You might find that it's helpful to also set some alarms on your phone, Especially if it's something like first thing in the morning, Where by the time you look at your schedule, You might have already sort of missed the time that you needed to get ready and go. Maybe you're setting alarm not in the morning, But you're setting alarm the night before. So there are ways to kind of finesse this stuff and make it even more useful to you. Back to you. Let's put this to work. Really, Really think about. How good your schedule system needs to be, Right? Like, You know what you got? How good does it need to be, Right? You want it to be detailed. You want it to be good. Is it as good as it needs to be? Is it better than it needs to be? Like, What would be the best way to do this? Number two is notice how you let yourself off the hook. Of either checking your schedule or putting things into your schedule. And you know, How do you counter that? You know, How do you talk yourself away from that? Talk yourself down from, You know, Taking that shortcut. And then finally. Notice whether it would be helpful to set alarms for some of your scheduled tasks, Right? Like having it in your schedule is awesome. And if you check your schedule a lot, That's probably going to work. On the other hand maybe it's helpful to set yourself some reminders as well. And like I said earlier, Especially if it's something first thing in the morning. So think about it. Think about how to use a schedule. Think about how best to use the schedule that you use.

Reviews

I’ve already listened to a lot of these videos, and they’re really great and very helpful. Thank you so much.

I have one suggestion. This is clearly a series, and throughout the videos you often refer to earlier episodes, saying things like, “In video 5…” or “A couple of videos ago, I talked about…”

Because of that, it seems that the videos are intended to be listened to in a particular order. However, on Insight Timer it’s not always clear which video is number 1, which is number 2, and so on. The videos appear in an order that doesn’t seem to match the sequence in which they were created.

Would it be possible to add the episode numbers to the titles, such as “Part 1,” “Part 2,” “Part 3,” etc.? I think that would make it much easier for people to follow the series in the intended order.

Thank you again for these great and very useful videos!🙏✨😍