The planner graveyard
Every system worked for exactly nine days.
Somewhere in my house is a drawer full of dead planners.
There’s another pile hidden under my nightstand. Probably a few more stuffed inside an old backpack. Nice shiny ones. Expensive ones.
I had a really fancy one shipped from Japan. It was beautiful. It had an elaborate setup of tags and index rules and... some other great ideas that were all abandoned just nine days in.
All purchased with great intentions, all dead within a couple of weeks.
For most of my life, these planners were evidence of an all-too-familiar story—I simply couldn’t stick with anything, no matter how much I tried.
The real problem? Traditional planners just weren’t built for my brain.
Most people have what Dr. William Dodson calls an importance-based nervous system. They organize their lives around highlighting what is important in their life so they can act on it. Rewards pull them towards these important things, and consequences scare them in the right direction.
Nearly every productivity system is built on this engine—and for good reason! It works really really well for people with importance-based brains.
People with ADHD are not this way. Our motivation runs on an interest-based nervous system. Rather than being motivation by importance, we are motivated primarily by:
Interest. If it’s fascinating to our brain, we’ll be unstoppable.
Novelty. If it’s new to use, we can’t wait to try it.
Challenge. If someone says it’s impossible, we’ll prove them wrong.
Urgency. If it’s almost due, we can finally get started.
When you know about these motivators, the planner graveyard makes perfect sense.
A new planner is novel so it totally works, at first. When the novelty wears off, that importance is supposed to takeover, but our brain doesn’t ever make that handoff.
It’s not about discipline or willpower. We’ve just been trying to control our interest-based brain with importance-based strategies. And when they come up short, we blame ourselves.
Over the next few days, try this: when you notice that something is really easy to initiate and get started on (anything, even if it’s a video game or some other distraction), pause for a few seconds and ask yourself why it was so easy. Was it interest? Novelty? Challenge? Urgency?
You can use these moments to build a map of what works for your brain, what things actually help move your brain into action.
Building a map to your own brain is the key to understanding
This type of understanding is key to making positive change in your life, and a much more useful tool then buying another planner that’s just going to end up in the same place as the rest.
This week’s worksheet: What Actually Moves You. Start mapping the things that actually help get your brain going.
P.S. Super excited to announce that the panel I’m joining for the ADHD Growth Summit is going to be free for all to join! It’s happening just a couple hours after this email goes out, so make sure register at https://luma.com/52ga2que for free access.
There are going to be a ton of other great talks on ADHD, so sign up here for access to the rest of the ADHD Growth Summit.