I hate knowing I have tons to do, yet blanking when I try to think of specific tasks. This feeling defined my mid-20s, just before I started learning about and treating my ADHD.
I existed in a constant state of stress and anxiety, but I couldn’t articulate — even to myself — what exactly I needed to do.
Medication helped settle my thoughts. Next, I needed a system to organize them.
My salvation came in the form of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. If you haven’t tried GTD or if you find the whole system too rigid, allow me to share one of the most important concepts:
Context is everything.
Why traditional lists and planners failed me
To-do lists never worked for me until I sorted them by context — that is, the location or resources they require. This was a major paradigm shift. I spent years struggling with calendar-based personal planners and daily to-do lists, recopying incomplete tasks from one day to the next.
Of course, some tasks need to happen on a specific day, like paying rent or turning in kids’ summer camp registrations. I still write those on my calendar. Others just require the right environment: a phone, a quiet room, a computer, or a specific person. For those, I keep context-based to-do lists in an app called Toodledo. Toodledo’s web and mobile apps keep my lists at my fingertips everywhere I go. Here are my contexts:
I also generate contexts as needed for my mom, husband, grandmother, and anyone else I converse with regularly.
If you dislike apps, try a sheet of loose leaf paper or a page in a notebook for each context. Anything that keeps your lists separate will do just fine.
Still wondering how this beats one neat, centralized list?
Allen claims, and I agree, that a single list would make it “too difficult to see what you need to see; each time you got any window of time to do something, you’d have to do unproductive re-sorting.”
Consider this alongside ADHD’s inherent working memory weaknesses. As Russell Barkley explains in Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, we use working memory to organize and prioritize tasks, hold multiple things in mind, and figure out what to do next.
For someone with unreliable working memory, a poorly-organized to-do list isn’t just “unproductive,” it’s paralyzing.
“It’s not that you’re incapable of logical analysis or you lack intelligence…” Barkley writes, “it’s just that you need to make the process tangible and external…so your emotions don’t erupt with the frustration of trying to do it all in your head.”
Externalizing tasks into contextual ‘buckets’ takes a huge load off your working memory. This makes it easier to get into your productivity groove (sometimes known as hyperfocus).
Hyperfocus for good
Hyperfocus has a bad reputation in our household. It makes it hard for ADHD’ers to change gears and switch tasks. However, with context-based to-do lists, we can use hyperfocus to our advantage.
I may put phone calls off as long as possible, but by the time I force myself to do it (usually a deadline is looming), I settle in and finish them all at once. My husband calls this “task inertia.”
Here’s the thing: I’d freak out if I tried to comb through my to-do list (usually 60+ items long) for the three phone calls I need to make. A separate, ready-to-roll, phone-calls-only list enables me to make more than one of the dreaded calls. It removes obstacles to task inertia.
Reclaiming lost time
In Getting Things Done, Allen stresses the importance of capturing “weird little windows” of time. Most of us use 10 minutes in a waiting room to cruise our smart phone. What if you check two small items off your to-do list instead? My “any computer” (a definition that includes my phone) list contains tasks like “make dinner reservations” (easy with the OpenTable app), “look at calendar for game night dates,” and “use quilt tutorial to make a list for the fabric store.”
These are the baby steps that move me from Point A to Point B, from “we should get together soon” to “see you on Friday night for dinner and board games.” They’re also the details that can slip through my fingers and make me feel like a major flake. ADHD doesn’t change society’s expectations, but it sure makes it tough to keep up.
Experience has taught me, when I receive one of those “weird little windows,” I need to be ready. I need to know what one tiny thing I can get done with the resources at hand. Organizing my to-do list by context has been the key to making that happen — and to tricking people into thinking I have it together.
How do you organize your to-do list? Does it work for you? Please share in the comments!
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As usual, you are a genius! Now I need to organize my lists for context. And add those books to my wish list on Amazon. Pinning you again!
Oh, Liz, you flatter me 😛
Seriously, though, Getting Things Done is amazing. And what I said in the beginning about the symbiosis between meds and a good system…I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
I’m pretty religious about GTD, and it’s become my canary in the coal mine. When I’m not on meds or they aren’t doing their job for whatever reason (hormones, lack of sleep, etc.), I notice stuff just isn’t moving forward. Meds are working = GTD makes the magic happen.
I really highly recommend GTD. It helped me learn to discern whether/when it was my brain or my external systems that were failing me 😛
Let me know how it goes with the contexts, and how you like Getting Things Done!
Hi! I just discovered your blog yesterday and can’t stop reading! It is like you know all my ADHD secrets! But I just had to comment on this post. Why oh why do we hate phone calls so much??? I just don’t get it. I also put off phone calls for as long as possible. Not that I have any logical reason for this. I just dread them and put them off until the consequences of not making the call outweighs the dreaded call. Wish I could get my ADHD as under control as your seems to be. Regards, Chanelle
Welcome, Chanelle! I’m glad you’re finding the blog helpful 🙂 I wish I felt like I had it all under control and figured out! It’s a process 😉
My theory on phone calls — besides being an introvert by nature — is they require us to think on our feet. The person may not pick up, in which case we need to know how to leave a concise, non-embarrassing voicemail. The person may pick up, in which case we’re under pressure to remember what it is we needed to say.
Then there’s the possibility of unexpected questions, or realizing we forgot to get our calendar out ahead of time, etc. I called to make a dental appointment for my kid a few months ago and the receptionist asked, “what’s your dental insurance?” I drew a huge blank and felt like a doofus. You can imagine that didn’t help my negative feelings about making phone calls!
Regarding phone calls–it took me a long time to figure out that my feelings about them weren’t just an irrational fear. I think what’s really hard for me is that I have to concentrate so hard to pay attention during a phone call, because there is no visual component to make it easier to focus. There are many situations where I’m nervous to talk to people in person, as well, but the phone always makes conversations seem so much more unmanageable. The only thing that helps me with this so far is to meditate right afterward. This helps me get over the “amped-up” state that I have to get into to handle a call.
Ha, I think that’s why I save them until I have a whole stack…I hate that amped-up state!
I’m looking at Toodledo. Do you make the folders your contexts?
Hey twhitty, Toodledo actually has native support for contexts. If you go to the “organize” menu at the top right of the screen (in the web app), you can choose to add/edit/delete both folders and contexts. I use folders for my GTD projects.
Although Toodledo is my tool of choice at the moment, I know it presents some issues for users with ADHD, especially if you rely primarily on the mobile app as opposed to the desktop version. My next big project is going to be my own dothething.app, which will remove some of the biggest barriers to implementing Getting Things Done with ADHD. I’m hoping to get a beta version out for a small group to test and provide feedback sometime this summer. The link will take you to a page to sign up for updates ☺️
I Googled “to do lists in categories” and came upon this article. Love it!
Just one quick clarifying question: Are your contexts drivers for your daily plan?
In other words, do you schedule/ organize your day by your contexts?
For example, PHONE CALLS: 10-11 am, COMPUTER WORK: 8-10 am, FAMILY MEETING 5-6 am, etc.
Interesting question! A lot of people seem drawn to the idea of blocking out time in this way but it has never really worked for me. I need a little more flexibility. If I block out a two-hour window for email, for example, and then I receive a phone call in the middle of it, I have trouble adapting.
Also, I very much need to be able to trust my calendar as a final authority: what it says, goes. If I start putting aspirational goals in there, like working on computer tasks from 8-10am, I water down that authority. My brain develops a subconscious understanding that some things on my calendar can be disobeyed if circumstances demand (e.g. if a phone call comes in or I decide laundry feels more urgent). I need everything on my calendar to NEED to be on my calendar: in other words, stuff that will actually lose relevance if it’s not done at that time.
Typically, I sit down at my desk (or wherever) and think, okay, what can I work on? At my desk in the office I usually look in my Office or Computer contexts for tasks that match my current energy level. I dislike the phone so I usually don’t make phone calls until they become an emergency. That said, once my brain is in “phone mode,” I find it easier to keep going. I’ll bust out my Phone context list and see what else I can do while I’m at it.
So I guess my use of contexts is more responsive to where I am and how I’m feeling. The contexts themselves aren’t a driver, but more a filter. I use them to hide tasks I can’t do right now and surface ones I can.