A bracelet I use as an alternative to a traditional To Do list. Bracelet lists work much for my ADHD than a focus and order dependent To Do format. Objectively, it’s the difference between getting things done and not.
With my ADHD, obsessing over productivity techniques has been a mandatory obsession for as long as I can remember.
“To do” lists are a contentious topic of debate with plenty of productivity advocates weighing in on their version of the one true correct way to make and use them. I’m not here to do that. Instead, I’d like to show you a system I developed through trial and error that works specifically for my brain. If it or a derivative of it works for yours as well, great.
These are not literal bracelets. The name felt fitting because these are physical objects, not apps. I imagine these like beads on a bracelet where as you move through touching each bead, you eventually come back to where you started.
Doing this (mostly) analog was important to me. Making this into some app was appealing but it felt lazy, and a little fragile if I needed a whole technology stack to be whirring in order for a cognitive system to work. As a side note, doing things digitally that could be done well in the analog lifts constraint that would otherwise drive the need to be inventive/creative in the manipulation of physical objects and systems.
This is pencil + paper by design, but I do need something to keep the time. The Seconds app has been working well for me for a long time. I create a circuit timer that repeats through the following timed sequence.
Each item is 5 minutes long
That’s really all there is to it. At each beep of the timer, I check which “thing” I should be doing.
And of course the breaks mean exactly what they sound like. Do whatever you want as a reward.
I keep a regular notecard with five things circled on it, each representing the “thing” I am to work on in a given interval.
I may have more than five, or I might think of something I want to add later. So I just make empty-circled items below this list.
As I finish items, I cross them off, and reassign the number to an empty circle of my choosing. In this example, I finished studying my flash cards, so I reassigned “3” to giving my dog his meds for the day.
Rinse and repeat. That’s the whole process. Sometimes I’ll also add a line with a crude icon of a trophy to the very top of the card to commit myself to a “One Thing that Matters”