Time Management Articles, Books, And Websites

One of the biggest problems we ADHD adults have with living with ADHD is time management. Learning different ways of ADHD management can help with that, as well as understanding how ADHD affects our ability to manage ourself around time, and finding ways of managing time more effectively whether at work or in your personal life.

I coach ADHD adults on a wide variety of problems with ADHD but one of the biggest problems, beside problems with self esteem, shame and guilt, is time management. I have quite a few posts on time management on my first blog Adult ADD Strengths.

Articles on Time Management

Books on Time Management

Websites on Time Management

Articles on Time Management

10 Keys To Time Management: A Guide PDF

From Coachville. Good tips including emotional one.

32 of the Best Ways to Get Organized When You Have ADHD

By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. Psych Central.

“Forget your appointment time.

Instead of focusing on when your appointment actually is, plan around the time you’re leaving.”

This. A thousand times this. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to help reverse engineer how to get out early so you can get there early for my ADHD coaching clients.

And assume life will happen, delays in traffic, forgot x, etc etc.

A Guide to Organizing the Home and Office PDF

CHADD USA. Discusses why adults with ADHD have trouble with organization, how to improve organizational skills at the home and office and how to stay organized.

Are You Tired Of Being A Yes Person? 20 Ways To Say No

You can’t manage your time well if you’re a people pleaser, constantly saying yes to others without knowing the true costs of saying yes and what you are also saying no to by reflexively saying yes.

Many of the ADHD I’ve coached or met have been people pleasers. Here are some ways to say no besides the direct no, which you also want to learn too, but it’s easier to start this way.

Delusional To Do Lists VS Realistic To Do Lists For ADHD Adults

I send this post out I did to all of my adult ADHD coaching clients. Most of the time I find that adults with ADHD don’t actually write to do lists, but they think they’re writing to do lists.

They’re actually writing wish lists. Doing idea dumps. Delusional to do lists. And deluding themselves that they’re doing creating doable to do lists.

ADHD adults frequently don’t apply reality filters to the their to do lists, and, consequently they often don’t get completed. Hence the irritation, frustration, and assorted negative consequences that follow. Including creating longer undoable to do lists. Plural. Rinse and repeat.

Here are 5 Reality Filters to apply to your to do list to increase your odds of success

Distractions How ADHD Adults Can Reduce Them

What are the costs of distraction in your life?
Why are we ADHD adults more likely to be distracted?
What reduces the chance of us being distracted?
Practical distractiblity reduction pair exercise

Gee Whiz, I Missed It Again: How Can I Improve My Time Management Skills?

Simple step by step guide on time management for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder via use of a dayplanner

How To Prioritize For ADHD Adults

What are your most and least favorite ways to prioritize?
I.e., Time, easy, hard, stress level, sort & simple (clear the deck), the fun stuff
Why?
What is the cost of not prioritizing effectively?
Benefits of prioritizing effectively
What are different ways of prioritizing?
What helps you to prioritize?

I’ll Do It Later, And Other Lies Adults With ADHD Tell Ourselves

Intentions are not actions. But often we ADDErs think unconsciously if we have the intention to do something it will get done magically and then we don’t have to do anything about it, worry about it or plan anything to make it happen, create a reminder that works for us etc.

Living in the Fast Lane: Evidence for a Global Perceptual Timing Deficit in Childhood ADHD Caused by Distinct but Partially Overlapping Task-Dependent Cognitive Mechanisms

Frontiers of Neuroscience. By Marx I, Weirich S, Berger C, Herpertz SC, Cohrs S, Wandschneider R, Höppner J and Häßler F.

“Children with ADHD seem to suffer from a general perceptual timing deficit which is not restricted to specific timing tasks.

In doing so, we suggest three distinct but partially overlapping neurocognitive mechanisms for discriminating, estimating/producing, and reproducing temporal intervals which seem impaired in these children: WM deficits might be common to timing dysfunctions in time estimation/time production tasks and in time reproduction tasks, with attention deficits additionally contributing to time estimation/time production deficits and motivational alterations additionally contributing to time reproduction deficits.

We found that children with ADHD both verbally overestimated the time intervals in the time estimation task and manually underproduced these intervals in the time production task when compared with controls.”

Medical Records: Getting Organized From John Hopkins University.

“Create a doctor directory, record a health goal, log symptoms and side effects.

Keep these records at the ready:

Key records more than a year old may be packed away. But keep documents from the past year readily accessible, including:
A family health history (particularly parents, siblings and grandparents)
A personal health history (conditions, how they’re being treated and how well they’re controlled, as well as important past information such as surgeries, accidents and hospitalizations)
Doctor visit summaries and notes
Hospital discharge summaries
Pharmacy printouts that accompanied prescribed medications. In a study of patients taking blood pressure drugs, about 40 percent were unable to name a single one of their medications.
Test results (such as blood work, urine tests, X-rays, MRIs, bone density scans, mammograms and prostate screenings). If you or your loved ones have certain lab tests done regularly, a record will enable you to track changes from year to year and ask informed questions.
Insurance forms related to medical treatment
Legal documents such as a living will and medical power of attorney
Managing Personal Time

Keep a log of how you or your loved one responded to any medications and treatments. Be specific with the name of the medication, the dose and what happened. This record will come in handy when trying to determine adverse effects of treatments down the line.”

Monochronic and Polychronic Views of Time

Different ways of viewing time. Also discusses convergent and divergent thinkers. Very thought provoking.

Organize Your Health: How to Set Up and Maintain Your Medical Records

CHADD USA. “Having good medical records shows which treatment approaches you actually received and can help guide future changes to your treatment plan if needed.”

Covers: getting the information together, what to include, creating the habit of recording information

Procrastination And Adult ADHD. Problems, Strategies And Successes

What is procrastination like for you?
Successes with procrastination
Problems with procrastination
What worked?

Projects How ADHD Adults Can Manage And Complete Them

Why adults with ADHD have trouble completing projects,
Possible obstacles and ways to navigate around those obstacles so you complete more projects.What strategies might help in completing projects?
Part of solving a problem.
Example of an Adult ADHD coaching session on completing projects.
Group Discussion Plan of How to Complete Your Own Incomplete Project.

Randy Pausch’s Time Management Tricks Video and Slides

Computer science professor Randy Pausch is a “virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center he shares his time management tips about link shows notes on his talk.”

Here is the video of it, link to pdf on it in the youtube video description

Reducing And Managing Distractions When You Have Adult ADHD

Why are ADHD Adults More Likely To Get Distracted?
How To Think About Distractions
General Ways to Reduce Distractibility:
Situational Things to Help Reduce Distractibility
Practical Next Steps to Better Manage Your Distractions

Self Management Relating To Time Management. Designing Structures That Help You Manage Yourself Around Issues Of Time

On of our Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group members, Jeff, who has been very successful in learning and applying time management techniques spoke on some of the strategies he’s used. I’ve also added some links to other resources at the bottom.

Some of the challenges our ADHD members identified relating to time management.
How can ADD impact your ability to manage time properly?
How can this challenge affect a person’s life?
What can a person do to gain control of their time management?
What has worked for me?
How have I been able to stick with it?

Task Management For ADHD Adults

Online tools
Offline tools
How do you decide what to do? (filters)
When is the best time to make a list?
How often should you make and review your list?
When do you change your system?

Teaching Time Management to Children with ADHD

Teachers’ tools and techniques to help ADHD students get organized and use classroom time more efficiently.

The 20 Best Ways To Take Time For Yourself (PDF)

We often neglect the most important person in our lives. Us. If you don’t time to relax, refresh and reenergize yourself, you won’t be very useful to yourself, let alone others.

Time Management & Organization

Lew Mills, PhD, MFT who focuses on ADHD talks about time management for ADHD adults and lists some related books on it.

Time Management Articles From Mind Tools

“Beating Procrastination – Manage your time. Get it all done.

Activity Logs – Know where your time goes

Action Plans – Starting to achieve, in a small way

Prioritized To Do Lists – Taking control of your time

Scheduling Skills – Bringing your workload under control

Personal Goal Setting – Planning to live your life your way

Time Management Products Reviewed”

Time Management For Anarchists: The Movie. You Don’t Have to Be An Anarchist To Benefit From This.

Jim Munroe created this great flash presentation on why and how anarchists can get more organized so they can “kick the boss habit”.

While I’m not promoting anarchism, this flash movie is:

a) Hilarious
b) Extremely creative
c) Well thought out and presented
d) Would appeal to not only anarchists, but also those that have general or periodic problems with authority.

Time Management Myths #1. You Can Manage Time

Time Management Myths #2. If I Could Just Find The Right Time Management Book, Everything Would Be OK

Time Management Myths #3. If I Only Had More Hours In The Day, I’d Finish My To Do List

Time Management: Learning to Use a Day Planner (PDF)

Great pdf from CHADD USA. Discusses selecting the right day planner, effective strategies for using a day planner and using a day planner for short- and long-term planning to improve time management results for adults with ADHD.

Tired of Always Running Late?

Time-management strategies to help ADHD adults be on time and organized.

To Do Lists. How We Hate Them

By Mark Forster, Time Management Consultant. He says that to do list’s don’t usually work but if you have to use them here’s some tips.

Trouble With Transitions For ADHD Adults

Managing time is also managing transitions in time.

Why do ADDers have more trouble starting somethings?
How to deal with problems starting things
Why do ADDers have more trouble starting somethings?
How to deal with problems switching tasks
Trouble switching out of hyperfocus
How to deal with stopping tasks
Create a plan for something that you have trouble starting, stopping, or switching.

Using a Day Planner as a Life Planner

By Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D. She co wrote ADD Friendly ways to Organize your Life. A GREAT book for organizing for ADDers. “Using a dayplanner is not a single skill, but involves a set of skills that can be worked on, one-by-one.”

What Teachers Can Do To Help With Time Management for kids with ADD

Many helpful suggestions by Sandra Rief, from her book The ADD / ADHD Checklist: A Practical Reference for Parents and Teachers. Covers: time awareness assignment sheets, calendars, student planners/agendas, schedules, long term projects, and other ways teachers can help.

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Books on Time Management

If you click on the books and buy them from Amazon, I earn a small fee from your purchase. Thanks.

ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life- Strategies that Work from an Acclaimed Professional Organizer and a Renowned ADD Clinician Updated 2016

The number one book for ADHD Adults on time management and organization. Updated edition.

It’s the first book I recommend to my adult ADHD coaching clients.

“Three main areas of organizing are included: organizing things; organizing papers; and organizing time. Following the stories are sets of solutions, both conventional and innovative, that offer the ADHD adult options on how to implement the text into his or her own life.

Critical to the ADHD adult is support, and Recommended Levels of Support are included that enable the reader to implement the solution and continue to make it work over time.

Each chapter closes with a Chapter Review and this feature shows the level of understanding of the audience by these authors.”

Conquering Chronic Disorganization

“Based on the stories of real chronically disorganized people, “Conquering’s” radical, easy-to-implement methods puts an end to long-standing paper, residential, and office clutter; and ends lifelong time management woes forever.

Written by one of the nation’s foremost authorities on chronic disorganization, Judith Kolberg, the Director of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, “Conquering” is funny, educational, and totally unique.”

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Revised Edition 2015.

There are tons of blogs and websites on GDT, he has a real cult following..

“David Allen, a management consultant and executive coach, provides insights into attaining maximum efficiency and at the same time relaxing whenever one needs or wants to.

Readers learn that there is no single means for perfecting organizational efficiency or productivity; rather, the author offers tools to focus energies strategically and tactically without letting anything fall through the cracks.

He provides tips, techniques, and tricks for implementation of his workflow management plan, which has two basic components: capture all the things that need to get done into a workable, dependable system; and discipline oneself to make front-end decisions with an action plan for all inputs into that system.

In short, do it (quickly), delegate it (appropriately), or defer it.”

Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. By Gina Trapani

“The 88 “life hacks” — clever shortcuts and lesser-known, faster ways to complete a task — in this book are some of the best in Lifehacker.com’s online archive.

Every chapter describes an overarching lifehacker principle, then segues into several concrete applications.

Each hack includes a step-by-step how-to for setting up and using the solution with cross-platform software, detailed screen shots, and sidebars with additional tips”

The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents

Nancy A. Ratey. “For the millions of adults diagnosed with ADHD, The Disorganized Mind will provide expert guidance on what they can do to make the most of their lives.

The inattention, time-mismanagement, procrastination, impulsivity, distractibility, and difficulty with transitions that often go hand-in-hand with ADHD can be overcome with the unique approach that Nancy Ratey brings to turning these behaviors around.

The Disorganized Mind addresses the common issues confronted by the ADHD adult:

“Where did the time go?”
“I’ll do it later, I always work better under pressure anyway.”
“I’ll just check my e-mail one more time before the meeting…”
“I’ll pay the bills tomorrow – that will give me time to find them.”

The Power of Focus Tenth Anniversary Edition: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Confidence and Certainty

“Canfield, Hansen, and Hewitt have taken the best ideas from their own successful careers (seventy-nine years of combined business expertise), and distilled them into ten powerful focusing principles.

The result is a treasury of insights that is enjoyable to read and easy to understand. At the outset, the book identifies the three most important fundamentals for consistent success: developing unusual clarity; understanding that habits determine your future; and using a “no exceptions policy” approach to focus on what you want.

Numerous anecdotes and inspiring stories help to reinforce each principle.”

View from the Cliff: A Course in Achieving Daily Focus

by Lynn Weiss

“As Weiss points out, ADD people – or so we’re labelled by society – are big-picture, bottom-line people. She wastes no time getting to the point.

Each chapter is bulleted as: Here’s the problem; here’s why; here’s what TO do; what NOT to do; challenges you might face while attempting this. Perfect.

She also notes in the introduction that each reader is designed differently, and in putting the book together she realizes that no one is going to identify with ALL of the troubles she seeks to address.

She recommends that each person use the book as s/he needs and not get hung up on anything there that might seem another label or that might not fit the individual.

Actually, the introduction is one of the best parts of the book – it deals the most inclusively with the psychology of ADD; the rest deals with tools to handle it day-to-day.”

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Want customized help for your unique ADHD brain on time management so you get more of the important things done and have less stress and more free time?