The usual organising advice goes something like: write everything down, review it daily, keep your planner up to date. It's good advice for people whose brains will reliably remind them to open the planner. For a lot of people with ADHD, the planner is exactly the thing that gets forgotten.
I'm not a clinician, and this isn't medical advice. It's a set of habits that suit a lot of households, and it comes down to one idea: the system should come and find you, not the other way round.
“A system you have to remember to check is just one more thing to forget.”
Fewer places to check
Every extra app, notebook or whiteboard is another place something can hide. One calendar and one list, both on the phone that's always in your pocket, beat five beautifully organised systems you forget exist.
If something has to live on paper, it goes where you'll physically see it: on the front door, by the kettle, stuck to the car keys.
Reminders at the moment of action
"Remember PE kit on Thursday" is a reminder at the wrong time if it goes off at 9am on Monday. A reminder is only useful when you can act on it straight away.
Set reminders for when you'll be standing next to the thing: Wednesday at 8pm, when you're near the washing machine, rather than Thursday at 8am, when the kit is wet. Location reminders, which go off when you arrive home or at the supermarket, work brilliantly for this.
Make lists visible, not hidden
A to-do list in an app you don't open might as well not exist. Put the day's three things somewhere you'll see without trying: the phone's lock screen, a widget, a sticky note on the laptop. Three is the right number. Twenty is a list you'll avoid looking at.
Routines with room to slip
Rigid routines break the first time a day goes sideways, and then it's easy to decide the whole system has failed. Build in slack from the start.
- Aim for most days, not every day
- Attach new habits to things you already do: tablets by the toothbrush
- Keep a "reset" version of each routine that takes two minutes, for bad days
- When it lapses, restart the next day without catching up
Share the load, not just the list
If you live with other people, the household system shouldn't depend on one person's memory, ADHD or not. Shared lists and shared reminders mean the plan lives in the house, not in any one head. There's more on that in the invisible job.
Body doubling for boring jobs
Some jobs are easier with someone else in the room, even if they're doing something different. Doing the life admin together on a Sunday, one person with the bills, the other with the school forms, turns a dreaded hour into something that actually happens.
I built Noa with some of this in mind: one place for the whole house, a morning briefing that comes to you, and reminders for whoever a task is assigned to. Whatever you use, make it the kind that finds you.