The ADHD-proof to-do list: three items, not thirty

On the fridge door there's a sheet of graph paper with twenty-odd things written on it in two columns, because halfway down the width ran out.

At the top, the date. It's from three weeks ago.

One is crossed out. It's the first one, and it was the easiest, and it was probably already done when you wrote it.

And on the table there's a new sheet, from the day before yesterday, with the same things and two more.

First of all, what this is

There's no proven method for getting organized here, because there isn't one. What follows explains why a long list behaves the way it does, and what can be taken off it so that it holds up on a bad day.

It tells how a tool behaves, not how you are. Recognizing yourself here doesn't mean you have ADHD.

A list of thirty things isn't a plan

It's an inventory. Having one is a very good thing, because what doesn't get written down gets lost, and that's what another article on this blog is about.

But an inventory doesn't say what to do now. It only says how much you owe.

And there's the ugly trick of long lists: they get written on the way up, when you can finally see the whole thing laid out, and they get read on the way down, when the only part that comes through is the size.

All written the same, all weighing the same

That list has the call to the plumber, the report for work, buying batteries and the thing about your mother you've spent two months not sorting out.

They're written in the same hand, the same size, one under the other. Looked at like that they seem like the same kind of thing, and they're nothing of the sort.

What it takes to separate them is a job of its own, and in brains with ADHD that job runs tight. In 2005, Willcutt and colleagues put together the reference work on those operations in ADHD, pulling in dozens of studies. The differences they found are real and moderate in size.

The honest part: they themselves warn that this doesn't explain every case, and that there are people with ADHD who do beautifully on those tests. It's good for seeing how the machine works, not for handing out names.

When everything weighs the same, the head doesn't choose. It stalls. And from outside, stalling reads as not wanting to.

And the list flattens time, which is the worst thing it can do

The thirty things sit one under the other, with no distance. The one due tomorrow and the one due in March take up the same line.

So the list hides exactly the fact you need in order to start: which of these is genuinely for today.

Why what's far away pulls so little has its own article here. For what we're dealing with, the consequence is enough: a list that doesn't tell today apart from someday gets read, all of it, as someday.

Three

Commonly used.

The idea is old and gets said everywhere: pick two or three things and keep the rest out of sight in the meantime.

What it does underneath is take one decision out of the worst moment, which is the starting one. When you get to the table, it's already picked. You aren't deciding and doing at the same time.

And it does another thing that shows more than it seems to: it makes finishing possible. A list of thirty never gets finished, so every day ends in debt. One of three can be closed, and closing something is one of the few things that pay the same day.

The honest part: on the rule of three there isn't a single trial. Not one. It's common practice, it's used everywhere and it makes sense alongside what's known about starting, and that isn't the same as being proven. If five works for you, then it's five.

The other twenty-seven don't get thrown out: they move house

Commonly used.

This part is what keeps the previous one from being terrifying. The rest don't disappear: they go to one single place where everything lands, and tomorrow's come out of there.

Without that place, picking three feels like abandoning twenty-seven, and then nothing gets picked.

The honest part: this hasn't been trialed in this population either. It's ordinary organizing, told as what it is.

How the three get picked when everything is shouting

Commonly used.

The question that usually unblocks it isn't which one matters most, because nobody knows that at eight in the morning. It's cruder: what actually happens if this doesn't get done today.

Almost always, for almost everything, nothing happens. And what's left when all of that falls away is two or three things where something does.

The honest part: it's a way of deciding, not a treatment, and it has no studies behind it.

The one thing close to this that does have backing

Backed, with one big caveat.

It isn't the list: it's the way one of its lines gets written. Sentences shaped like "if this happens, I do this", stuck to a particular moment instead of to a time on the clock.

The detail of that backing, with its cracks and its numbers, is already told in another article on this blog, so here it goes in short.

The honest part: it isn't specific to ADHD, it works considerably less well in real life than in the lab, and what moves its effect most is whether the goal genuinely matters to whoever writes it. With a borrowed goal it deflates.

Where the list lives

Commonly used.

A small detail that changes a fair amount: the list of three doesn't get put away. It gets left where you'll walk into it without looking for it.

A list inside an app, behind two taps, exists when you remember that it exists. Which is exactly what can't be asked for here.

The honest part: no trials, like almost everything in this article. It's environment design.

And the day not even the three come off

Because there are going to be days like that, and a list that only works on the good days is no use at all.

What gets done that day isn't pushing harder. It's lowering the size of what counts as done.

Not "the report", but opening the file and writing the title. Not "call the bank", but finding the number and leaving it written down for tomorrow. That's a real step, not a discounted version of a step.

And if that doesn't come off either, the day's total is zero and nothing happens, because one day isn't a trend.

What doesn't help, and gets done all the time, is dragging what wasn't done onto tomorrow's list with an asterisk beside it. That's how the list of three turns into six, and in two days it's the one on the fridge again.

Tomorrow, three get picked. It doesn't matter if two of them are the same as today's.

What happens with lists and never gets told

Writing down something you've already done so you can cross it off. And feeling the little kick, and knowing perfectly well what you've just done.

Spending forty minutes copying the list out neatly into a nice notebook instead of doing the first thing on it.

Throwing the whole list in the trash and feeling relief.

And the one told least of all: having shown someone the list so they'd see everything you're carrying, which isn't the same as asking for help but looks a lot like it.

When the problem is no longer the list

If what's underneath isn't the disorganization but months of not being able to manage the basics, or the mood, or the sleep, or a tiredness that won't lift, that deserves an appointment and not a new system. Your primary care doctor is a good first place.

And if you've spent years trying planners and apps and none of them sticks, that doesn't prove anything about you either.

Three, and why three

Because three can be finished, and finishing pays today.

Because eight in the morning is the worst moment to choose, and with three it's already chosen.

And because a list of thirty wasn't a plan: it was the tally of what you owe, hung on the fridge at eye level.

Of everything above, one thing has backing and it's the if-then form, which isn't even ADHD's. The rest is used a great deal and nobody has trialed it. I'm telling you straight.

This is educational support, a complement to medical care and never a substitute for therapy or treatment. Nobody is diagnosed here.

And if reading this you've thought that your problem isn't the list but everything sitting behind it, the Map starts right there. It's free, it takes a few minutes, and it hands your own tangle back to you, in order.

And one more thing, set apart from everything above. If you find yourself thinking you don't want to be here, that doesn't wait for an appointment: tell someone today, a professional or a crisis or emergency service in your country. And if something is getting away from you, with drink, with food, with whatever it is, that's one to take to a professional too. It isn't that there's no room here for how you're feeling: it's that they can help you better there than here. No talking around it, and nothing to be ashamed of.

Where this comes from

• Willcutt et al. (2005). Biological Psychiatry.