As someone who's struggled against the woes of having ADHD, time management started to become an unbearable and unmanageable issue for me. I realized there are many apps out there, many task managers, planners, and other utility, some specifically designed for adhd. But nothing seemed to stick and actually work. Finding notion, I began tinkering and crafting things to find what worked for me. Something simple, both in design and in use. I hope it can help others as much as it has me.
Latest Changes:
Automatized Day And Week Schedule
I created this template to counter a very specific set of issues. #1. I struggled with using normal time blocking because I felt it didn't have enough customization for my liking and what I wanted to do. #2. Having ADHD, I didn't want to forget to click a checkbox or look at a static page/database for my hour to hour schedule and get side tracked from being productive. That's where this template originated.
● Automatized Day Schedule
I won't bore you with the technical, the long and short of it? Just plan your week in the "Plan The Week" section, and every day all your events on that day show up in the "Today's Schedule" area (favorite that page, you'll thank me later 😉). Broken down into current events, upcoming events, and events already passed for the day. The events here change automatically according to the event time and current hour, so once you've setup a week you can just refer to your day schedule at a glance.
I should probably explain why this is such a focus here. I've tied the hourly time tags to the same system as the date/time and defaulted events to day of creation. So even if you don't want to hassle with the built-in time setting, just use the hour tags and your event should still show up in your schedule sometime that day!
● Integrated Hot-Swap Time-Blocking
To make time blocking a bit more customizable, I turned the time-blocks of a traditional chart into main groups, and the weekly chart into more detailed events as your daily sub-group events. They're color-coded to show the connections. Ex. Food Break is a main category and is orange on the time-block chart, so your event in the weekly schedule section would have the orange subcategory tags Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner. I like this system because it acts like a hot-swap. On any day if I'm not feeling an activity that isn't required, I can change it out on the fly with any other related subcategory activity according to subgroup.
Time blocking with groups pictured above
More detailed weekly planning
● Integrated Reminders
There's an easily accessed area on the main dashboard dedicated to the current months quick reminders, or events with few details specifically used only to set a time and date with a reminder set in notion. Simply make an event, set the time and reminder time for it (don't forget!) and it'll sit there until you click done. Complete with time, date, duration and countdowns. They're togglable to see in your day schedule or overall calendar view and there's also an archive view for easily checking any previous reminders. Just in case you need to check further than the current month the dashboard shows.
Reminders on the dashboard pictured above
Notions built-in reminder setting
● Integrated Appointment Scheduling
Like the reminders, appointments you log sit on the dashboard for ease of access and visibility and are logged in the monthly calendar view for further viewing than the current month.
