Digital calendars are the bees knees. I am so grateful to be living in the age of the digital calendar. Specifically Google Calendar is the bedrock on which my life is built. I have no horse in the race, so to speak. Feel free to think what you want of Google. Evil? Not evil? Somewhere in between? Regardless, Google Calendar is the best. To be clear, I am a Mac guy, but also an Android guy. So, I’m more than familiar with iCal too. It sucks. Don’t bother. Though there may also be another calendar out there that is awesome too. The point is that a functional digital calendar is an amazing tool to manage life, particularly life with ADHD. As with any tool, user error can undermine the potential benefits.
In my opinion, the greatest asset of a digital calendar is the reminder/alert function. The ability to not even think about an event until your phone/computer/watch reminds you that you need to do something is amazing. I am old enough to remember the stone age days pre digital revolution when you had to put an appointment in your planner and then ACTUALLY REMEMBER the appointment at the correct time in your day. For every appointment or event you had to get that Goldilocks warning or not too early, and not too late, but just right.
The thing is that most people only fear the ‘too late’ problem. But too early is just as big a problem, maybe bigger. Remembering something too early, if you don’t have a system to remember AGAIN, is functionally just like not remembering at all. Not to mention all the brain energy that you will waste during your day trying desperately to not forget the thing. Because that brain power will only be relevant for a very small window of time, right when you need to know about the even to act.
Not letting the digital calendar do the hard work for you is the biggest mistake that I see my clients make. They are extremely anxious about their historical difficulties managing time. As a result, they don’t trust themselves to either figure out what the appropriate time is or that they build in “wiggle” room that, counterintuitively, makes things worse.
A calendar reminder is a message to yourself that is saying, “You need to do a thing now!” Emphasis on the ‘Now.’ You need to leave your office for a meeting, Now. You need to grab your stuff and leave your house for your hair cut appointment, Now. You need to log on to a Zoom meeting, Now. It is not a reminder that you need to log on, leave, or pack up in half an hour. I could get distracted by 100 things in half an hour. Every event in our life that isn’t a predictably repetitive one needs its own reminder time. How long to get to your kids psychiatrist in Boston? Even with that example, it will be a different amount of time if the appointment is at noon or if it is at 9am and you need to drive in rush hour traffic.
My clients are usually shocked when I tell them that my default reminder time for zoom/client meetings is only three minutes. That is because that’s exactly how long it takes to run to the bathroom, grab a drink, and be in front of my computer. If my reminder were five minutes, I would convince myself I could do one more thing and end up being late. The takeaway is that, as counterintuitive as it seems, a shorter reminder time, as long as it isn’t too short, is much more likely to get you where you need to be on time.
Standard disclaimer: When posting my thoughts here, I feel that content is far more important than perfection. I try to practice what I preach that ‘done’ is better than ‘not done…perfectly.’ So, unlike with my book, I don’t edit much, if at all. I hope you can look past any small imperfections and find the content useful. Also, I’m sick this week and my brain is decidedly foggy. I’m 100% sure this is not my most linear and coherent post. But, I found a way to get it done… a few days late.