

TL;DR—Watch the videos about time management. I remember having to check a bag when I was flying to back to Chicago. I normally don’t check bags, but I stood obediently in line and just as I got to the front, I heard the yelling. A young woman was told that her two suitcases were too heavy to fly. From the shouting I figured out that even if she moved stuff from one bag to the other, they would be too heavy to fly. She’d have to pay the expensive fee to fly with the over weight bags or get rid of things that weren’t important. “But it’s all important. All of it! I guess I’ll pay.” Someone tapped my shoulder and pointed to the next available attendant. I said, “Man, that’s rough with having bags that are too full.” The attendant didn’t blink and said, “It happens every day.” A lot of us feel that what we carry, what we have to do every day is all important and eventually, we have to pay. And we don’t know how to manage our time better; we don’t know how to make everything fit or even determine if it belongs. So we just keep carrying it all. And we just keep paying. This post (a long one, friends) is designed to walk you through time management principles that work for someone with ADHD and for anyone else as well. I’ve dived in and researched the best principles that help us get the life we want. Systems To Capture All The Things My brain is a constant flurry of activity. It’s like a ball-pit filled with four year olds and each ball is an idea and the four year olds just zing them across my mind all day. Especially Regina, she has an arm on her you would not believe. With our ADHD mind, we need a system that captures all the commitments and appointments we have. We need something that is flexible so that anything we put in it, fits. But we also need that system to be non-boring. We ADHDers have a low boredom threshold. We’ve all started a brand new shiny planner only to abandon it first thing when we set it down for too long (or lose it). For capturing information I use an analog system. For planning things, seeing the scope of all I have to do, I use a digital system. Now I don’t expect this exact system to work for everyone as is, but once you discover what works for you, feel free to tweak the rest to work with your needs (and let me know what you find successful.) Analog System. (Pros: We remember writing stuff by hand. Cons. Repeatable stuff we have to write over and over.) I’m a huge fan of Field Notes and I carry them in my pocket all the time. When I think of something I need to remember, or just ponder, I jot it down. And I do it immediately. Here’s how I break it down: Here are those worksheets! I need to be clear on this point—I write down what is in my head immediately, if I can. (If I can’t, I use my smartphone, but that’s rare). We’ve all had that feeling where we want to remember something like, “Order flowers for your mom. Order flowers for your mom.” And once it leaves your head, you forget—but when you write it down, you remember. Your brain is a terrible and I mean terrible short term memory device. What you ate for breakfast your first day in 3rd grade, you remember. The fact that you need to pick up milk again? Instantly forgotten. You have to capture that thought before it is pushed out by the other 1,000 thoughts you have incoming. It doesn’t have to be a Field Notebook, but some kind of pen and paper. James Altucher uses waiter’s pads. Some people use index cards. But you must carry a system that allows capture. It will take some time to develop the habit, but once you do your mind will be cleared for actual thinking instead of remembering. But what do you do with all those notes in there? You condense them digitally. Digital System. (Pros: Easier to schedule. Reminders Cons: Needs electricity, can be boring) Take ten minutes and open up that notebook, find whatever appointments or things you need to remember, and put them in your digital system. I page through my little notebook and find everything that is time related. Classify these events as either a one shot thing, less than 5 minutes (pick up the dry cleaning) or something that is going to take more time than that (dentist appointment.) If it’s a one shot, I use the “reminder” program in my phone to remind me. I can set that for a time: “Remind me at 9:00 AM to pick up the milk.” Or I can set a reminder when I leave my location, “When I leave here, remind me to call Roger.” I use my reminder function in my phone all the time. Yes, my phone beeps a lot. No, it doesn’t bother me. You know what does bother me? Forgetting to call Roger. If it’s an appointment, I immediately tell my phone, “Create an appointment for February 17th, 3:00 PM: Dentist appointment.” Now if I’m at the dentist, and they hand me that appointment card, I do two things: I put the appointment in my phone immediately and I also shove that card in my notebook. Why do I keep the card? Because I might need to reschedule or just call and ask a question. But now my brain doesn’t have to remember it. If it is a non-time thing, such as, “How many books has Oliver Sacks written? What’s his most popular one?” I’ll write that in the Notes section in my phone to come back to later. Immediacy. When my ADHD brain reminds me to do something that I can actually execute (remembering to call Alan, cleaning up the clutter off my desk, etc.) in 30 seconds or less, I’ll just do it. If it takes the same time to record the thought as it would to do the action, I just do it then and there. I’m the king of leaving empty shampoo bottles on the shower ledge. One day I thought, I need to get rid of those before I wind up on some Lifetime show and then my friends find out. So I grabbed a bag, shook the bottles, and tossed the empty ones. The time it took was less than the intro to a Taylor Swift song. I’m not saying I listen to Taylor Swift.

My point is: the little things don’t need to be written down most of the time. If you plan and plot out a two minute task—you are getting a poor return on your time.

How do you estimate time?

Planning Vs. Urgency Work in 30 minute blocks. I plan everything I do in 30 minute blocks. I won’t say, “That will take me 45 minutes.” Instead I’ll round up and say, “That’s an hour.” I round up because I need to overestimate the amount of time it will take to plan for contingencies. There’s most likely traffic on the way to the dentist’s office. If I’m planning on cleaning the house and I think it will take me an hour and 15, then I round up to 1 hour and 30. This keeps my schedule clean and easy. It’s easier to remember and it helps me be on time. (I have the opposite system when it comes to airline flights. I shift down to the hour. For example, if I’m flying to San Diego and my flight is at 8:45 AM, I’ll shift the time and say, “It’s at 8:00 AM.” This way I’m leaving early and I still have a buffer if disaster strikes; like traffic or a long line at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. When I’m writing or doing something a bit taxing, I take a 5-10 minute break after every 30 minutes of work. If I’m writing, that break can’t involve the computer because my brain doesn’t realize that I’m taking a break—it will still think I’m working on the computer (which I am, even if I’m quickly paying bills.) You’ll fill the time no matter what. You might be wondering what I do with the left over time. If I get to an airport early or finish early because I have more time, I automatically fill that time with some easy tasks: If I’m away from home: Call a friend and catch up.

Read on my smartphone (I use Evernote and Pocket to save articles on the net.)

Take out my notebook and write down anything I need to remember. Cross off what’s done. People ask me all the time how do I get so much reading done and I’ll say, “I don’t mind waiting. I always have something going on.” See where you can fill the time with things that give you life. It’s OK to go with the flow if you are expecting lower results. Many of you will say that you don’t want to be restricted, that you just want to respond to what’s going on and go with the flow. That’s fine. But you will find yourself responding to the urgent and not the important. If you want to write and you don’t set aside the time to do it, everything else will fill the gap. You’ll choose laundry, Angry Birds, the newest season of your favorite show on Netflix, instead of writing. You’ll even rearrange your closet again to avoid writing. The flow is a myth. Setting aside time to pursue the things we love is how we gain respect for ourselves. How do you regain your focus after a break? Farm That Out—Get Your Time Back There are a lot of tasks I hate in life. For example, laundry and taxes. Laundry to me was such a pain because I didn’t have a washer and dryer in my home and I had to share with a lot of people. It was terrible. So one day I asked the local laundromat if they did “fluff and fold” and she said, “Oh yes! $1.00 a pound!” So I brought in my laundry and it wound up being $30. This was about three weeks of laundry. I happily handed over the money and got back crisp, folded and organized laundry. I can hear you balk: “But Ryan, that’s so much money.” Not if you figure that it takes me about four hours of running back and forth to check my laundry, make sure someone hasn’t messed with it, the quarters, and then the folding and . . ugh. $30/4 hours = $7.50 per hour. I’m paying that rate to get that much time back in my life. SOLD! Same thing with my taxes. When they are complicated, I simply pay someone to do it. It saves me time and I budget for it. There are a ton of places to farm stuff out now on the internet. Fiverr is the Answer to (Almost) Everything I know Fiverr has been around forever. But I’ve recently discovered how easily I can get some tasks done. I budget about $20 a month for Fiverr (that’s just going out a couple of times.) I’ve had the Fiverrs: Solve a WordPress problem that haunted me (Est. 3 hours of my time.)

Plan a trip and build an itinerary to Australia with all the sights I wanted to see (Est. 2 hours of my time.)

Create an image for my blog (Est. losing my mind after 4 hours.)

Edit 500 words for me. (Est. 1 hour of my time.) That’s 10 hours of work saved by $20. I paid $2.00 for an hour of my time. Get on Fiverr. Save yourself some time. If the Brady Bunch Can Have One I’m not a neat freak, but I’m not a slob. I’m somewhere in the middle. Being a bachelor at 42, I’m sure I have some terrible habits, but all and all, I’m not ashamed when people stop by. I just hate cleaning the house. So while I do maintenance that every person should do, every three months I get a housecleaner and she does a “deep cleaning” and I come home to a clean house. $100/4 hours. I pay a little more for my time, but the stress it relieves is huge. I can’t afford to have it done every week or every month, but I do love to come home to a clean house. There are sites like Handy will find one for you (an affiliate link). What Have You Always Wanted to Say Yes To? The addiction of the urgent, all of the tasks that yell for our attention, drown out the whispers of what we actually want to do. I’ve been passionate about writing all of my days but I found that many “urgent” things got in the way and I didn’t spend time writing like I wanted. I also wanted to start exercising, but again, I’d rather pay some bills, check out cat videos on the internet, and organize the linen closet because those towels, man. I thought about what the next year would look like. Who was Ryan going to be the following year? What would I look back and be grateful for? What would be my regrets? Not writing. Not working out and gaining weight. Not having a book done. Never completing a NanoWrimo. I needed to say yes to writing because the sand in the hourglass keeps falling and no matter what I do, it won’t stop. And at the end of my days, which is made up of hours, days and years, I needed to start carving that time before the regret became something I couldn’t turn around. I carved out time to just walk. I put on some headphones and put in podcasts about writing. Two birds, one stone. Nice shot. Poor birds. Take some time—figure out what you have wanted to say yes to: playing the violin, more time with the kids, writing that book of poetry, etc. And these things don’t have to produce anything. They don’t have to have some kind of ROI. But they do need to bring us joy or at least contentment. The linen closet can wait. Saying No to the Time Wasters! But where do you find the time to say “Yes” to these things? My friend Jason Kotecki brilliantly writes: “When did it become a badge of honor to be busy?” Our Western culture frowns on those who have plenty of free time and space to breathe. We cram so many appointments and commitments into our lives that our we burst at the seams. We tend to distract ourselves with the multitude of activities that we don’t really have a space for quiet and a space to do what we really want. We are addicted to the urgent and the busy because it gives us a sense of validation. Of course I’m valuable, look at all the things that are required of me. So it’s time to clean house and start culling the things that suck the time out of your life. Here’s a list of what you might consider kicking out. Smash your Television: Doesn’t have to be dramatic, but your television takes a lot of time from you and you won’t realize it. Seth Godin writes a brilliantshort article about it. I don’t own a television and yes, I have Netflix, but I never “shop” for what I want to watch. I love stories and I pick out great media to get involved in. But if you could have a television free weekend, or even a week, you’ll be shocked how much you can get done. Quit the Clubs: If you’re involved in an organization that isn’t giving you life, that doesn’t excite you—quit. I know that sounds cold, but if you have to will yourself to be there, you are killing your willpower and your joy. If they are up in arms about it and angry at you, that’s even a better reason to leave. Wave goodbye. Deliver That Quick: I have toiletries delivered to my house using Amazon. I have zero shame about it. I have it set to send me paper towels and that keeps me out of the store. That keeps me out of the parking lot. That keeps me from buying things I don’t need. It keeps me sane and saves me some time and frustration. Worth it. Reduce the Choices: I eat the same meals all week. I don’t really deviate. I like what I eat so I don’t have to choose. I probably have six meals in my rotation and I’ve greatly cut down on my fast food consumption because I’ve started hitting the gym (about time!). But once I did that, once i started buying the same food at the same store every week, I noticed I was in and out of there in minutes. I said no to having all this variation and choice and it has saved me a great deal of time. I’m not saying you should be boring and eat plain chicken breasts over a thin grey layer of tofu; choose what you love, do that, and save that energy from decision making for creating awesome stuff. And seriously, kill that TV time.

But Decisions are the Worst? How do you make them better? (check out that face below….yikes.)

Want a Free Book, Videos and More Great Strategies? Give Yourself Permission A lot of us are waiting for permission to act on the things we love. We are waiting for someone to say, “Yes, go do that.” We grow up with needing permission for everything. Whether it is going to the bathroom when we are in class or getting a drivers license. And then one day, somewhere down the bumpy road of adulthood, we don’t need permission anymore. We have cereal for breakfast and dinner. When it comes to our passions, we somehow have abdicated our right to pursue something we love. We continue to wait for permission. Here’s your permission—go do that wonderful thing that we all want to see and hear. Finding All the Missing Time When people ask me how I write 5,000 words a week (which is tiny-cakes compared to most authors I know, like Chuck Wendig.) I tell them I find the gaps, the spaces where I can clack away at a couple of words. (I’m writing this on my lunch break.) But you’d be shocked how much time is wasted in the waiting, in the between. If I’m waiting in any kind of office, I open up my Kindle and get some reading done. If I can, I quickly check my bank account and even pay a bill. In my car I keep a book I’d like to read and a pad of paper. When I have to wait and I don’t want to drain my phone, I’ll crack that open. If you can read an extra 20 minutes a day—that’s over two hours a week. Wouldn’t that be something? Podcasts/Novels on the Drive I’m grateful I don’t have a long commute, but I recently drove down to Nashville to visit some friends. It was a 7 hour drive. Most people said, “That’s too much. How are you going to drive that far all alone?” Podcasts. Podcasts are my jam. I’ll download a ton of them and then just have them keep me company. There is something about listening to the human voice telling a story, explaining something, or making me laugh that keeps me entertained. I listen to a lot of “Radiolab” and “Welcome to Nightvale.” I try not to listen to podcasts I necessarily want to retain, but what I want to actually enjoy. Your ADHD will dial in and listen because driving can be such a chore and you’ll be happier, keeping your ADHD brain active. The Contemplation I know a lot of this time management seems like: go go go, do do do. But you want to make sure you have time for quiet and stillness. And I know, your ADHD mind might rebel against that. It might fight you to simply look at a lake while sitting on a picnic bench. But I found that quiet contemplation is one of the best things for my ADHD and my time management. I make it a practice to go for a walk a couple times a week with no headphones, no music. I leave everything digital behind and walk. Yep, my ADHD races and if I need to capture something, I write it down. But then I just walk. I let the thoughts run through my head. If a painful or embarrassing memory comes up, I acknowledge it and I imagine myself compelling it up like a piece of paper and throwing it aside. If I think of someone that has hurt me, I take a deep breath and remind myself that I forgive them. I only do it for about an hour and I head home. Every time I do it, even if it starts to rain or snow in the middle of the walk, I feel better and a bit unburdened. I’m able to move quickly through the day and feel better about how I am doing.

Handling Unstructured Time—How Do You Do It?

Morning Before People are Up? We talked about hidden time, but a friend told me about his most productive time, “I’m a husband and the father of 5 girls. I get up at 4:30 AM every morning.” I spat out my coffee. “Your kids get up that early?” “No, they get up around 6:30 AM, so I have two hours to work out and write.” That’s a big sacrifice—getting up that early. I know I don’t have it in me, but if you can muster getting up that early, I say go for it. I asked him what his strategy was for getting up that early and he said, “I have an alarm clock on the other side of the room. I have to get to it before it wakes up my wife. So far I’m not dead.” If you are sleeping with your mobile device, hoping it wakes you up, that’s a rookie move. You can easily slap that snooze alarm. Also, if you are going to bed at midnight, you won’t manage on that much sleep. You have to hit the sack earlier. Recently I’ve been playing a game where I have to be getting ready for bed at 9:30 PM every night. And by getting ready for bed I mean: hygiene, getting my clothes out for the morning, making sure breakfast is ready to go and my gym bag is packed. No electronics are allowed in the bed. I read fiction (so I don’t have to think about it) and it’s an actual book. Most nights I can simply take a couple of deep breaths and I’m out. Evening After People Go to Bed? Some of you are night owls so you can stay up past midnight and get work done as people sleep. This is a solid solution, but make sure everyone in the household is good with that. A friend of mine, a night owl and an insomnia sufferer, does massive amounts of work at night, but he is also in charge of all the laundry in the house. While he’s rendering his video work, he gets the whites done. If you can make it at night getting stuff done and be functional in the morning—go for it, just make sure everyone is cool with your night owl habits. A great post on being a night owl. One Day Off, At Least Life isn’t solely about productivity. We do need time to rest and enjoy our lives. Sometimes the battle against our ADHD mind is tough and we can feel like we are just running on empty. Make sure you are taking time to refill and rejuvenate your life. I laughed when someone told me that I needed a day off: i had writing to do and laundry. I had to pay some bills and make sure nothing was growing in my fridge. “You aren’t productive enough during the 6 days—that’s why you can’t find a day of rest,” my friend said. He had me write down all the things that would give me life on a day off, an ideal day. I jotted down: getting a massage, a long walk, a good book, heading to the movies (I really like the movies, but I rarely go), spending time with friends and maybe volunteering. He looked at me said, “Totally doable. That’s what life is like. Aim to do half of that on your day off.” So I gave it a go. I got a massage. I went to the movies. I went home and got a bit restless and I took a guilt free nap. I slept four hours. I told my buddy and he said, “Totally normal for you to do that. You were sleep starved. Eat a good dinner—take care of yourself.” A lot of faiths will call that a Sabbath. I call it “not burning out.” Maybe you have a hectic pace, but pick one day where you can take care of yourself. It can be something small, but when it comes to our time management, if we are just taking care of other people, and we don’t leave room for us, we will eventually be giving pieces of ourselves away we can’t get back and we will be filled with resentment. Don’t do that.

TREAT YO SELF

How do you Catch Up When You’re Way Behind? Deeply Annihilate Clutter Clutter is the enemy when it comes to your time management because you have to make decisions around it. It starts to sap your strength and you experience what is called decision fatigue. If you have to decide around 60 t-shirts, when you need to wear just one, it wears you down. If you are trying to clear the clutter off your desk before you get to work, and now you have to put those files away, and you are wondering where last year’s tax return is, it will also drain you. Set a timer for 20 minutes and get rid of all the clutter you can find around the house. Papers, recipes, glasses, cups, clothes you don’t wear, toys the kids don’t touch, and just get rid of it. I keep a bin in my utility closet marked “GOODWILL.” When I find something I don’t need, I toss it in there and put the lid on the box (so I’m not tempted to reach back in.) When it’s full, I take it to Goodwill and start again. Every time you do this, you get productive and peaceful time back. When you are feeling stuck, de-clutter for a set amount of time and you’ll feel a lasting freedom. One Last Thing. I honestly believe we are here to create things: great art and great relationships. Focus on that which gives you joy and forgive yourself often for the mistakes made. I’d love if you shared this or left a comment and let me know what you thought. Thanks.

Want More Strategies? And a Free Book?