You have to have your BATDL with you all the time. The ADHD brain is a wild, exciting, and unpredictable thing. And, it is absolutely bananas living inside one. Even effectively medicated, I am hardly neurotypical. No ADHDer is. We can amuse and befuddle our closest people with the tangents and leaps that our superbrains make. And it is all logical to us. You just don’t see/hear the 14 thoughts between the last thing you said and the perfectly reasonable (but wildly out of left field to the rest of the world) thing I said next.
I point all this out to illustrate that we are not always in charge of what’s going on between our ears. And, as magical as that maelstrom can be, it doesn’t always help us be productive and efficient. Which is why it is essental that we capture our important task immediately in the moment. If we don’t, our brain with be three steps ahead and that task might be lost for quite a while.
Also, when that thought does come back, grab it and capture it right away. You might remember a task when you are in the shower. You might remember a task on the subway. You might remember a task in bed at night. You might remember a task while folding laundry. And, there is, literally, no time like to present to capture that task on your BATDL.
The secret is that you don’t actually have to remember anything. Really. Well, hardly anything. You just have to remember to capture your task and check your BATDL. If you can do that, nothing will slip through the cracks. How awesome will that be? Rhetorical question. But, I’m going to answer it. It’s completely awesome. I spent many years on this planet wondering what was slipping through the rather large cracks in my life. Since I created my BATDL, I have never had that though. That’s almost 15 years of higher productivity AND lower stress. Winning!
This is a summary of the first chapter of my upcoming book: 10 Steps to a Badass To Do List: Task management for the ADHD brain. As always with my blog, I value content over perfection. I am not in the habit of editing much, if at all. I hope you enjoy the content. If any of my (hopefully minor) mistakes bother you… that’s on you. Maybe try meditating?