My ADHD Planner

I was diagnosed with ADHD (ADD) two months ago. At the ripe old age of 53. How I never knew that I had it until then is beyond me, but I guess I bought into the stereotypical thought pattern that little boys who can't sit down are the ones with ADHD. 

I'll add more later about what brought about my diagnosis but I wanted to show you this planner now while the year is still new in case anyone else can benefit from it!

After my diagnosis, I was searching for a new planner (as I usually do towards the end of the year) and it suddenly occurred to me that there may be planners designed for ADHD. I found this one and love it so far!

It's the Wilkii Planner (currently sold out but they'll restock soon) and it was just under $30. 

Here's what I like about it:

It has monthly pages with blank dates so you can start this anytime you want! I am a planner & school supplies nerd so I always have to start in January, but this makes it really flexible. I also like that the boxes are blank and there's lines off to the right side. I put in my appointments in the boxes and then things I want to work on this month on the right side. 

The next section is new to me. After the monthly calendar, the first week starts with a daily blank schedule divided by half-hours. I generally don't break down my days or weeks like this, but I hope it becomes useful. The other new part is that it recommends you choose five categories of "things" and assign colors to them. I'm not a colored pencil or marker girl but so far, I'm geeking out over my colors! LOL! 

The categories I chose are work, family, house, health, and errands. You can obviously choose any you want! Which is why I really like that this planner leaves blanks - what works for me may not work for you, right? 

Work is for work, lol. Family stuff will be my kids coming home or my plans to see them, our Friday night dinners with Tom's family, or anything Tom and I want to do together. House is basically house chores. I work from home and I really need to separate out that category - it's so easy to do the dishes when I should be working or work when I want to avoid the dishes. Which is really more likely. Health is dr appts, gym time, etc... And errands are any errands that don't fall into the other category! Although I'm finding that my purple color is almost too dark so I'll probably switch that to another color next week. 

As you can see, I have barely filled this out so far. The work-from-home life has always allowed me total flexibility and I typically don't schedule my days. I bounce from thing to thing all day long in utter frustration, so I'm hoping that this will help with that. I plan on working on this page daily, not weekly. I'll update as I go and let you know how it works out. 

Next are the daily pages. 

This is a bit difficult to see and I'll be really honest that it intimidated me at first. And still does a bit. It's different than any other planner but I'm on day 3 and it's really making a difference.

Basically, the left side breaks down your tasks based on their priority. The "to-do or die," smaller stuff, events you have to be at, and impromptu tasks. I've been sitting down in the mornings and planning these out and I really like it. One of the hardest things for people with ADHD to do is prioritize their to-do list. And wow! That's my issue. This is helping a lot! 

The right side includes a doodling spot - I'm not a doodler but a lot of people are. The beauty of it is that you can use it for anything - I've been using it for adding things to do for the next day/s and I then add them to the next day's page the following morning. The bottom of the page then includes a daily scoring section. It assigns points to all of your tasks from the left side of the page and gives you a scoring guide. The goal is to help you understand what's working and what's not and to help you pinpoint the positives. Which I absolutely love! It's so easy to get down on yourself for what you didn't get done - so let's focus on what we did get done and the positive attributes of that!

After the end of each week, there's a weekly review page and then a next week set-up page, with optional categories you can assign them that align to the daily tasks. I can't wait to get to this at the end of the first week! I love a fresh start and this feels like such a good way to get the new week ready to go!

So that's what I have so far! Please comment and let me know if you have ADHD or have used a planner that works for you! I'm new to the ADHD world and I'm just a planner nerd so I'd love to chat about both! 

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