- 0
- 0
Building a lifestyle means juggling countless details, endless decisions, and inevitable forgotten items or looming deadlines. Not to mention the special kind of irritation that comes with schlepping up and down the Home Depot aisles desperately trying to remember what on earth that fourth item was.
At TRR, we keep things simple—especially for the ADHD half of the team. Willie and I have very different approaches to lists. His lists are often scribbled on Post-Its—then forgotten in his jeans pocket. Ohhh, the number of times I’ve watched him dig through a pile of notes trying to find the right one.
Ms. ADHD, on the other hand, has always taken her lists ver-r-r-y seriously. Yes, there are small lists in an app on my phone for when I’ve got a Costco or Sam’s Club run coming up, but on a day-to day basis, my To-Do list is on an old-fashioned steno pad.
My method actually came from a “stress busters” class I took years ago. The idea was simple: list your tasks, but instead of checking them off, color them in with bright highlighters. The colorful visual is more encouraging than a series of empty boxes—and strangely, the brain seems less discouraged by a blank stripe in a rainbow than by a missing checkmark. (I have no idea why this is, but it works for me.) We were also taught to transfer incomplete tasks to the next page and start again the next day.
Pretty simple, huh? For those of you wondering if I actually carry around something as awkward as a steno pad… I do come from the generation that carried around leather bound, overstuffed planners and I actually lost my planner—a lot! I have, in fact, also evolved. If there are things I will need while I’m out, I do what any modern woman does. I take a picture of my list with my phone!