Sweet Siri

Technology is a often a two-edged sword. On one hand, I’m definitely the grandma who objects to phones at the table. On the other, my own phone is — and this is no exaggeration — a lifesaver for me.

Most ADHD’ers will tell you that with our crazy executive function issues, we rely heavily on planners, organizers, lists, calendars, and all manner of reminders. What we probably won’t tell you is that we frequently lose those planners. Or we don’t manage to write the appointment on the calendar. Or the organizer becomes useless because it is in location A while we are in location B. It was that way forever.

Enter Siri on iPhones. I can say, without any reservation whatsoever, that this has been the single most important invention in my entire ADHD life! When I was still working as an adoption caseworker, I would often have to juggle appointments for several families in any given week, so having a calendar on my phone was pretty handy, but being able to ask Siri,”What appointments do I have next Thursday?” was amazing. I got to the point where I rarely wrote anything down. Instead, I would simply tell Siri to set an appointment or post a reminder at a certain time on a certain date. That allowed me to “set it and forget it.” Well, almost.

What would inevitably happen would be that I would get up in the morning and ask Siri, “What’s on my schedule today.” I would then receive a list of whatever appointments and reminders I had set. The problem was, I really did forget all about whatever the schedule was going to be until that morning! It caused some serious scrambling at times. It wasn’t that the schedule was more than I could handle. It was that I hadn’t prepared for everything on that schedule.

ADHD folks are nothing, if not creative. I simply adjusted my Siri dictation. I would set the appointment, but then set two reminders. The first was usually for about three days prior to the appointment and went something like, “Begin prep for Jones family home study.” I would then set an additional reminder for the day before the appointment. It said, ” Jones family home study prep complete and in briefcase.” I can’t overstate how effective the system was — or how much it lessened my anxiety. Everybody knows ADHD and anxiety are practically kissing cousins, so for Siri to address both was nothing short of miraculous!

I’ve been retired for a while now, but I still use Siri every single day of my life. It’s like having a brilliantly effective personal assistant, but without any of the drama that can be associated with the human version. She can’t sigh at an unappreciated assignment. She’s never late. She never talks back. She keeps me organized so I can enjoy life, confident I haven’t forgotten anything important. And if I have? Well, she’ll remind me in time to save face.