Does anybody have recommendations for time management software for ADHD/autism/executive dysfunction?
Not the staying-on-task stuff like pomodoro. I struggle specifically with time blindness and task initiation:
1. I forget where I am in the process, what I'm doing, what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, what's a priority, what happened yesterday, how long I've been working, what freaking day of the week it is, etc. (Also, can't estimate project duration to save my life.)
2. I struggle awfully with getting started in the first place. Any little disruption and my brain says I'm starting over again. My biggest problem seems to be that I have some much interesting stuff I'm working on, and it pains me to interrupt that flow to work on something comparatively dull but more urgent. A big part of that is because, odds are I will forget where I'm at with the cool stuff I was doing, or even forget to come back to it altogether.
@hosford42 i use an app called todoist because it affords me cognitive offloading and agency over when i do my tasks. i tag names of long-term projects with an "ongoing" tag. i keep subtasks and notes under those main tasks. when a project i had a fiery passion for fizzles out, it'll still be around to remind me about its existence months later for triage and i can either pick it back up or throw it in the figurative dumpster.
it's a big widget on my phone's home screen so i am always aware of it. i had to train my self-discipline to not make the widget fade into the background noise. the effort ended up being worth it for me. i can also pick up my phone and send "freeze food tom" quickly for a task to freeze my leftover chicken tomorrow.
i use the free plan so i can only set "do dues" and not "due dates" but jotting deadlines down in the same task helps. as well as separating tasks into subtasks with specific dates. you can very easily manipulate your task dates as needed and there is also an "upcoming" view to help with time perspective. my time blindness is bothersome so it helps to be able to frontload this effort on assigning dates for me. it also works for me because it's not a rigid calendar/schedule.
i named a specific app there but any app or pen-and-paper system that can tag, set reminders times, and priority works.
@hosford42 yeah, that makes sense. i actually had a few false starts with it. first time i couldn't wrap my head around it. another time, i forgot about it. a different time, i tried engaging with the streak feature, broke a big streak and got so angry i cold quit and stopped using it for years. when i decided to use it again, i thought I'd try to have a big widget on my phone's home screen as a reminder. if it stayed as an app icon, I'd probably forget it about it again at some point.
