I spent most of my life thinking I was bad at, well, everything. Turns out it was actually ADHD – something I was diagnosed with later in life. I never learned the necessary coping mechanisms to organize and function as others might have in their formative years.
Since then, I’ve learned that I can structure my thoughts and actions with the help of apps. I won’t remember daily tasks, but apps do. Together, they provide the help I need to function without thinking.
Elizabeth Turk | Digital trends
Instead of Googling “top 10 best apps for ADHD” which doesn’t really dig into how apps can truly help me, I looked at many others who suffer from the same issues as me. We all asked the same question: How do I live like this?
What I needed
Before I even knew I had ADHD, I tried to control my disorganization, procrastination, and forgetfulness by writing myself notes as reminders. This ended badly, as I then lost an outrageous amount of paper around the house, in my pockets or in the void where the specially selected socks go in the washing machine version of Narnia.
I’ve tried the Notes app on my phone for years. It was better than paper, but I still ran into a problem where I would create many notes and none of them had a structure. They would shuffle between deadlines, ideas, tasks and reminders. Because of this, they have become a business unto themselves just for picking. That, in turn, would make me procrastinate on solving that mess. I still haven’t looked at them until today.
This kind of life kept frustrating me. I needed a unique set of tools to keep track of my to-dos, constantly remind me of deadlines, and keep and organize notes. I needed apps that would divide my thoughts into work, chores, reminders, and other little things (like remembering that nutrition is important).
Routine for daily tasks
Despite finding a few duds, I messed around with some apps that people with ADHD have said have helped them. After trying these apps, I really feel hopeful.
The application with the strictest organization is Routinery. It does exactly what I hate to do but need so much. Daily tasks and chores have always been my bane, sometimes causing me to waste hours staring at the clock and avoiding work. This adds urgency to tasks that my ADHD needs to actually focus on.
Elizabeta Turk | Digital trends
After some input on my part, Routinery contained my ideal daily routine down to the minute. This included remembering to drink water and taking breaks when hyper-focusing on a hobby (ever spent 14 hours without a break drawing until 8am?). Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my planned schedule, but I’ve learned that I can look at the list throughout the day to remind myself of what I’ve done and what I haven’t done yet.
HabitNow for creating habits
In a similar way, HabitNow does a similar structuring of my life, but more with habits. Of which I have nothing. With HabitNow, I could easily input the habits I wanted to reinforce and check them off as I did them.
Every day it would refresh and remind me to repeat them. In the past with just notes, even when I was able to remember to try to stick to the habits, I had nothing or anyone holding me accountable. HabitNow reminds me of deadlines for such tasks and nags me until I tick them off. It takes a ton of mental strain and anxiety out of remembering everything for me.
Monday.com organizes my work
Elizabeth Turk | Digital trends
When it comes to organizing work, Monday.com is perfection. It organizes and shows me all my current deadlines. Including completed work tasks that I may need to recheck. The part that really scratched that itch in my ADHD brain was being allowed to include specific notes about every work assignment I had.
It was also incredibly easy to navigate and set this all up. I actually enjoyed filling it out because it was such a smooth process. I can’t stress enough how incredibly well Monday.com has structured all my work. I still open the app every few hours just to see what’s coming up and what I should be working on.
The forest keeps me on task
One app I really appreciated didn’t do much to organize my life. Instead, it helped control me. That app is called Forest. You plant a small tree and the app prevents you from leaving it and stalls by telling you that the seedling will die if you leave before the time runs out.
I don’t know about others, but that’s more than enough leverage to convince me to stop and finish my current job. The app gives you the benefit of collecting and viewing the trees you have grown in your garden. You can also see all the trees you have grown and how much you have been able to focus. Since ADHD sufferers like myself need more visual representations of their actions, this inspired me. I reminded myself that I was doing good for myself in small ways over and over again.
Lifesum helps me take care of my body
Elizabeta Turk | Digital trends
Food and meal organization are not something many people consider, especially if that person has ADHD. Lifesum, one of the best fitness apps of 2022, was one of the apps that others recommended for many reasons. Many dieting or food management apps offered the same features with slight variations, but the one app I fell in love with was the cohesive combination offered by Lifesum.
I was able to collect recipes, meal plan and put together a grocery list that I could check off as I shopped. But what I loved the most was the food diary and progress meter. It kept a calorie log like any other food diary, but calculated how much carbs, protein and fat I needed for my body and knew how much each food I ate increased those needs. Together, the app was everything I needed in terms of food.
Due to ADHD, I – like many others – suffer from the fact that I will hyper-focus on pleasurable foods because of texture or taste. This sometimes comes at the cost of ignoring my diet for weeks until my body physically tells me I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I actually earned anemia at one point because of my food choices, so having something to help monitor if I overdo it is almost a literal lifesaver.
What helped and what didn’t
The biggest help in organizing my life has been structuring every part of my needs into the right apps. There is no single app that can do everything, and if it could, it would be so complicated that I would just give up on it.
Instead, I let Lifesum help me with food and meeting my body’s needs. Monday.com has been perfect in keeping my work under control and always visible. With HabitNow, I’ve started building life-changing habits and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon.
The routine put together my daily schedule so that I could choose it as needed. The only thing I still struggle with is that it’s a little too rigid in planning every little thing I do. With my daily schedule, I can hardly ever follow plans down to the minute. Even more so with my ADHD which manifests itself in the way I keep getting off track.
With all that said, there is something extremely magical about being able to take care of myself without depending on others. I finally feel like I’m a little better able to take on the world and just live. This newfound stability and accountability is a constant reminder of what I should be doing so I don’t have to punish myself for remembering things my mind just can’t keep up with.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn