In essence, time-blocking is scheduling chunks of time throughout the day where you’re going to work on specific tasks, but doing it in a way that leaves you with just enough flexibility for your good ol’ ADHD brain so you don’t get overwhelmed. I use this section of The ADHD Project Planner which makes it nice and easy, but you can write something similar out for yourself if you don’t have one (or get one here!).
Once you make your to-do list and prioritize the tasks as Must Do, Could Do, and Do Later, you’ll assign an hour or half hour block to do that task. Use this as a roadmap that you can follow through the day! The trick is that you can do the task at any point during that block, but you have to set a rule with yourself that you can ONLY do the task within that time block.
If you miss your block, you miss your chance! You’re probably thinking that you can’t afford to just miss your most important tasks, but that’s sort of the point. If you set the rule for yourself knowing you only have that time to work on it, the urgency and consequences come into IMMEDIATE focus. This is a great way of “hacking” your ADHD brain to give yourself an internal motivator to finish your task.
So by playing this little game with myself I create a sense of urgency and micro-deadline for the task and not only that, when I can see everything laid out like this it's much less overwhelming because I can follow it throughout the day. Now that you have specific times where you're allowed to work on certain things, you literally just go block to block to block and it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the equation. That lowers the chance that I’ll just give up because a lot of the thinking effort is done already! If you keep it moving, don't forget to schedule time for breaks and meals, and prioritize properly then you will actually finish your to do list using this method.
The ADHD Project Planner will make time-blocking and prioritizing your day MUCH simpler, and help you remember to actually do it. It’s specifically designed to cater to our unique needs as people with ADHD, and takes into account our struggle to stick with this kind of thing. If you’ve never been able to stick with a planner before, I’m so confident you’ll have an easier time with it I’m going to put a coupon code at the bottom of this email so you can see for yourself.
Thanks as always for reading,
Aaron Frank
Founder, The ADHD Project