How Using a Planner Can Help Manage ADHD: Benefits and Tips
Hi, friends :) Today I want to talk about how using a planner can help you with ADHD management.
A planner is a simple yet powerful tool that can help you prioritize tasks, set goals, and track progress. I personally use planners almost every day and I've noticed that it significantly lowers my stress level, as I don't have to keep everything in my head. Once you write your task down, you are 50% closer to accomplishing it. Here are some of the benefits of using a planner for managing ADHD symptoms:
- Reduces Stress. Do you often feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks you have to accomplish in a day? Using a planner can help reduce stress by breaking down tasks into manageable steps and prioritizing them. When tasks are organized in a planner, it is easier to see what needs to be done and when, reducing the stress of feeling like there is too much to do.
- Improves Time Management: Time management is a critical skill for everyone. Using a planner helps you manage your time effectively by scheduling specific times for each task. This approach can help you stay on track, avoid distractions, and complete tasks on time (+ don’t forget to reward yourself 🤩).
- Increases Accountability: Using a planner can increase accountability by setting goals, tracking progress, and reflecting on accomplishments. When you use a planner to track progress, you can see how far you have come, which can be motivating and encouraging (dopamine boost⭐️).
- Gives you extra motivation: ADHD brains thrive from instant gratification, this explains why we can start and drop tasks very fast if they don't interest us. Fill out your “Reward chart” and reward yourself every time you finish a task. This will definitely increase the chance of accomplishing the task instead of quitting 😊.
I've dedicated the last 4 years of my life to developing ADHD-specific planners, and here is what I think:
- You don't have to track everything. As a creator, I try to give you a big variety of pages and templates to choose from, but you don't have to use all of them (it is way to overwhelming). Just pick the ones that you need and try to stick to those. I personally have a problem with remembering things, and if I don't write down a list of tasks that I need to accomplish the following day, it is quite likely that I will forget something important. So I always use a daily planner or a simple to-do list. However, I don't have to track how much water I drink or whether I did my skincare routine because I always remember about it. I hope it gives you the general idea of how planning actually works: you don't have to plan EVERYTHING, just identify the areas of your life where you need additional help, choose the templates to target these issues and stick to those.
- All of us have different needs as well as our own issues. There’s no one-fits-all option, some of us are good at planning, others at managing the budget, and so on. Identify the areas of your life that you would like to be better at, create a step-by-step action plan using the corresponding templates and stick to it.
I hope you will find these tips helpful :)
Best regards,
UsefulPlanner :)
