Stories by Jordan McMahon on Medium

Your Phone’s Camera Isn’t as Good as You Think

Jordan McMahon — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 15:56:37 GMT

Software — not a better lens — is where the real innovation is happening

Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Making Your Mac a Productivity Powerhouse

Jordan McMahon — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 17:16:49 GMT

My Mac often looks more like a shelter of neglected apps than it does a place to get work done.

Whenever my workload feels so overwhelming I might reach my breaking point, usually about once a month, I go on an app binge. I’ll download any app that I can convince myself will change my life by ridding me of my ADHD woes and making me a better worker.

Usually these apps last a few days before discouragement and disappointment lead me to deleting them and going back to what I know.

This process isn’t entirely without merit, though. Every now and then an app slips through the cracks and makes me better at getting my work done. These are the apps that help keep my ADHD at bay and let me get to work.

Accountability: RescueTime

When you have a world of information and distractions at your fingertips, you need a barrier between them and your work to keep you on task, especially when ADHD will do everything in its power to pull you away from what you’re doing. RescueTime is built to do this in two ways. First, it logs how much time you spend on a given app or website. That time then gets broken down into categories of productive time and non-productive time. As you get an idea of how far off you are from the amount of time you’d like to spend on your work, you can look at your biggest distractions and begin to adjust your habits accordingly.

You can take this a step further and use RescueTime’s Focus feature to block out any and all distractions that drag you from your work. It’s part of RescueTime’s premium tier, which will cost you $9/month and give you some other features like alerts and in-depth reports on your habits. But if you’re looking for something that can make you stick to what you’re doing free of charge, you can pair RescueTime with SelfControl, a free app that blocks access to any distracting site you put in its list.

Password Management: 1Password

There’s no sense in forcing your brain to remember things that good software can hang onto; leave your limited brain space for more pertinent bits of information. I use 1Password to save time by storing my login information and keeping it within reach. It’s always in the menu bar so you can search for whatever login info you need, and it automatically knows when you’re logging into something you haven’t stored yet so you can throw it into 1Password right away. There’s also the added benefit of creating unique, hard to guess passwords for each account to keep it safe from prying eyes.

Scheduling: Fantastical

I’m terrible at writing down my commitments before they get tossed into a Pile of Things I Totally Forgot About but Totally Shouldn’t Have. Fantastical has done a better job at helping me stick to my commitments than any other calendar app to date.

What makes Fantastical stand out is its menu bar icon, which shows you a condensed view of your schedule so you can stay on top of what’s going on in your life. It also keeps an input bar at the top for easy logging of upcoming events, and you can write them in plain English to get them scheduled as quickly as possible. You can type in phrases like “Coffee with Michele tomorrow at 2,” press enter, and jump right back to whatever you were doing. These two features have helped me stick to my arrangements and reduce that Pile of Things I Totally Forgot About but Totally Shouldn’t Have.

Notes: Bear

Even though it’s fairly new to the scene, Bear has made its way into my daily workflow thanks to two key features: its interface and its organization system.

If I’m using an app on a daily basis it has to be pretty or I’ll lose interest and my unfaithful brain will jump to something more eye-catching at the cost of my productivity. Bear’s ability to blend simplicity with power results in an interface that’s both pleasant to look at and easy to navigate. Whenever I store a note in Bear, I know it’s in safe hands.

That’s where its second key feature comes into play. The way Bear organizes notes has surpassed anything else I’ve seen. Rather than storing things in folders, Bear uses a unique tagging system to make your notes easy to sift through. Unlike other note apps with tagging systems, Bear treats tags as folders by letting you create nested tags for more fine-tuned organization and letting your notes exist in multiple “folders” at once.

Forgetfulness and disorganization are ADHD’s main weapon against my ability to get things done, and Bear is a staple in how I fight back and maintain my sanity.

Bookmarking: Spillo

I’ve accumulated a lot of information over the years, and it’s all useless without a good way to sort through it all. Spillo, my Pinboard client of choice, helps me sort through everything by giving the bookmarking service a super charge in organization.

First, its attractive and simple interface ensures that I’m engaged when I’m using it. Second, it shows me any links I’ve stored that are now dead, as well as links I haven’t yet tagged so I can quickly clean up and organize everything I’ve thrown into Pinboard. I’m prone to letting my surroundings fall into unorganized chaos, and Spillo helps keep me from reaching the point of no return with my resources.

Journaling: Day One

When we say we’ll never forget something, it’s probably because it’s something we talk about enough to commit it to memory. Anything I don’t repeat often will inevitably be forgotten by the end of the week, and sometimes this means losing memories I want to hold onto.

I’ve talked about Day One before, but what I love about the Mac app is the fact that I can type longer entries on it than on my iPhone thanks to the Mac’s keyboard. When I take the time to write my daily entries from my Mac, I find that they’re more articulate and I can see my ideas through to the end in a way that a smaller screen and less capable keyboard don’t allow.

Clipboard Syncing: Copied

A lot of my work involves text, and if I don’t have a way to hang onto that text I’m definitely going to forget it. Copied has helped me hang onto snippets of text that I’ll need for work but don’t need to store long-term. Any time I copy something, a new clipping is created in Copied and I can quickly access it when I need it.

Copied is a powerful ally for someone who struggles with multitasking. Its automated templates can turn text copied from an article into a note with the article’s title and source link. It’s also great for quickly aggregating chunks of information from different sources to group together later. I can go on a copying spree, saving every bit of text I’ll need for an article or some other project, then merge all of the clippings in Copied into one note that can then be placed in something like Bear for safe keeping.

Copied’s List feature makes it a great place to store strings of text that I end up using frequently, like a canned email response or links to my articles when people ask for them.

These features have made Copied a staple in how I manage my projects because it can store my information without disrupting my work.

Text Expansion: aText

Until someone finds a way to create more time in the day for me to get things done, I’ll keep using apps that can make me better at being productive by cutting down the amount of effort I have to put into those seemingly trivial, yet crucial, tasks.

As much as I love Copied, I use a lot of repetitive phrases, tags, and contact information that don’t really fit in its system. Still, I need a way to save time so my always-on-empty brain can stay on course without losing momentum.

aText keeps me fueled by letting me turn these longer strings of text into a small phrase or string, so I can type out ::blog:: and aText will quickly turn that into a link to my site’s blog. It’s easier than having to copy/paste my URL or type it out manually, without the end result suffering.

Like most apps for power users, this can quickly soak up hours of your time while you try to figure out what you need shortcuts for. Your time is probably in short supply so the best way to work around this is to set aside an hour or two creating shortcuts for anything you can think of off the top of your head. As you use aText longer, you’ll notice more phrases that you can incorporate into aText’s system, adding and removing as you see fit.

When you’re done you’ll be saving your fingers and your brain useful energy that can go to something more demanding.

Task Management: Things 3

None of this would matter if I didn’t have something to remind me of what needs to get done. I’ve cycled through nearly every todo list app on the App Store, and since launching two weeks ago Things 3 has stolen my heart.

In many ways, Things 3 excels because of its similarities to Bear. Cultured Code, the developer of Things, struck the perfect balance of simplicity and power. In addition to its clean and beautiful interface, Things has a few features that pushed me switch from Todoist. It’s the first productivity app that’s managed to fuse my calendar with my tasks without feeling cluttered.

I’ve also found Things 3 to be great for managing larger projects because under each project you can create sub-headings to divide your tasks and keep them organized. But my favorite feature is the completion bubbles next to each project. As you complete more tasks in a project, the white bubble will start to fill with blue color to show you how far along you are.

These features have made Things 3 the most effective task management app I’ve used to date, and it does so while being a joy to use.

ADHD will always be an obstacle in my pursuit to complete tasks on time and stay afloat. No app or service will ever change that, but there are apps that can make it just a little bit easier to get through your work.

Once you find those apps it’s easier to develop a system that works with your brain rather than against it. These apps might change over time as services get shut down or something better comes along, but the core idea is the same: take a look at the weaknesses in your workflow and find software that will fill in those gaps without forcing you to change the way your brain is wired. Your work will be better for it.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Drowning Out the Noise

Jordan McMahon — Thu, 04 May 2017 15:01:24 GMT

I don’t often feel the need to apologize for my ADHD. It’s something I was born with, and it’s as much a part of me as my brown hair or my relentless hatred of crunchy peanut butter.

But it’s hard not to feel guilty for a condition that makes a battle out of staying engaged in conversation or work for any meaningful amount of time. There’s no way to say “I swear I’m interested but this other thing caught my attention and I drifted off” without sounding like a selfish asshole.

ADHD doesn’t care, though. It treats your brain like a television with 1,000 channels and nothing interesting to watch, so it clicks from station to station, lingering just long enough to get an idea of what’s happening on any given show before moving on to the next one.

My brain is relentless in its channel changing, taking me out of time with loved ones or disrupting my workflow because it has an itch that there’s something more interesting out there that I need to know about immediately. My memory is bad enough as it is; an inability to stay engaged with any activity makes retaining information even more of a struggle.

This is something I’ve struggled with my whole life, but it’s gotten significantly harder since I got a smartphone. Having a constant connection to every social media feed, the latest news, and a slew of brilliant games serves as a constant temptation to look at something that promises to be more enticing than whatever my mind refuses to latch onto.

I’ve toyed with a lot of solutions to this problem, but nothing has worked better for keeping the noise of the outside world to a minimum than my Apple Watch.

Let the right ones in

Each device in my life has been assigned a specific role, which makes getting to work easier and focusing less strenuous. My laptop is where I do all of my audio editing, writing, research, and illustration work. It’s my primary creation tool. My phone is my main method of communication, most-used camera, time manager, and news reader. While my phone is crucial for my workflow, its ability to serve multiple purposes makes it a hub for time sinks and easy channels for my brain to flip to.

The Apple Watch solves this by serving as a middle man between me and my phone. It excels because of its limitations. It’s not meant for checking Twitter or Instagram, playing games, or reading the news, although you can do those things if you’re so inclined. What the watch does exceptionally well is trim my workflow to the bare necessities so I can avoid my phone and its distractions as much as possible.

For my watch I took my approach to notifications and raised the intensity for a more barebones experience. Only the most important notifications, like messages and calls, to-do and calendar reminders, and weather alerts in case I need a change of clothes or an umbrella, make their way to my wrist. I chose these because they’re all immediately actionable, and it’s easy for me decide if it’s something that can wait or if it needs my attention right away.

Your world at a glance

While the watch’s notifications system has helped me in my quest for a distraction-free life, a small set of apps has changed the way I work. When I’m with a client, friend, or trying to watch TV, I can leave my phone in another room or in my pocket and still get important calls or messages without the added temptations. Since I don’t have to pull out my phone to see what someone’s said to me, it’s easier to decide what I need to respond to and what I don’t.

But the real power of the Apple Watch lies in a set of well-designed apps. Thanks to the way Drafts is implemented on watchOS I can tap the complication, a widget that exists on the watch face, and immediately record a thought before my brain clicks that remote and sends the idea on its way. Todoist’s app makes it easy to see my daily tasks without disrupting what I’m doing. Authy’s app has made two-factor authentication seamless; a few taps on my wrist and I’m logged in with the assurance that my account is safe. I can also quickly trigger a Due timer to stay focused on my work and let my watch tell me when it’s time to move on.

These are all things I need to stay current on, so being able to check in without stopping what I’m doing for more than a few seconds is the difference between showing interest in what you’re doing and coming off as distracted and bored.

If you have ADHD, you’ll never have full control over your brain’s remote. You’ll have the channel changed on you at inopportune times and it’ll get frustrating. But that challenge doesn’t have to overpower you at every turn. When you equip yourself with the right weapons to fight back, whether that’s an Apple Watch or something else entirely, you can keep hold of that remote just a little while longer.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Navigating the Maze

Jordan McMahon — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:58:01 GMT

I’ve been in the workplace long enough to know that organization is crucial to my success. I’ve also lived with myself long enough to know that ADHD can and will do everything in its power to counter this necessity.

When it succeeds, I’m left inside a maze of things that need organized, completed, or otherwise handled that I’ll inevitably fail to navigate. The longer I’m stuck in this maze, the further away I get from accomplishing my goals. Resentment builds, and I start to feel like a failure for being incapable of simple tasks.

Nowhere has this cycle of frustration and inadequacy been more apparent than on my phone’s home screen, where I often find clusters of apps that I promise can change my life, only to create a pile of misfit apps that makes it more difficult to find the ones I need to get my work done. Since my phone is the device I have with me the most, this is troubling.

Years of cycling through this process beat down my motivation. The growing barrier between me and my work ensured I’d never get things done. I had to get it together.

Finding meaning in the mess

Once I hit my breaking point, I had to ask myself what role my phone should play in my life. The roles will vary for everyone, but I use my phone to stay in touch with the outside world, be mindful of my obligations and schedule, get some writing done, and consume content in my spare time. This doesn’t cover everything, but it does serve as guidance while trying to bring sanity to my second brain.

Defining the role your phone should play allows you to identify the apps that best fill those roles. Once you’ve found them you can organize them by purpose and secure a spot on your home screen for the most necessary ones.

Your all-star apps

You’ve figured out what your phone is for, now you need to find the best tools for the job. Prioritizing in the moment can sometimes be impossible with ADHD. Save yourself the trouble and structure everything before you hit your breaking point.

Take a look at all the apps you need to get your work done and keep you sane, then narrow those down to the ones you use every day. These are the apps that will be front and center on your home screen.

Somebody once told me this phone is gonna roll me

I try to use as many apps with 3D touch functions as I can so they’re more than just icons on a page. This saves time by keeping your most-used apps within view and keeping their most important functions within reach. Since our goal is to reduce the amount of thought we have to put into using our phones, this is invaluable.

The single life

If you have ADHD, you’re all too familiar with forgetting where that thing you need is. Committing to a single-page layout has been the best way to manage this on my phone by helping me keep my main apps to a minimum and reduce clutter.

Anything I don’t need on a daily basis gets put in a folder; I know they’re not going anywhere. This keeps my less frequently used apps out of the way so I don’t have to worry about feeling overwhelmed whenever I look at my phone.

You can set these folders up however you’d like, but I organize them roughly by function into four folders to maintain symmetry. Each folder is labeled by an emoji to mirror my Drafts setup: work apps, creation apps, leisure apps, and miscellaneous apps. This has kept me focused on the tools I need for work and kept everything else out of sight until I need them.

In the spotlight

My phone has become my most organized and accessible device for my daily needs. This works thanks to Spotlight’s system-wide search, which I use to launch any app that’s not on my home screen. They’re just a down-swipe from the home screen and a few key strokes away.

A lot of modern apps also provide Spotlight integration, so you can search for more than just apps. I use it to open specific notes and documents, search through messages, quickly get to Pocket articles, and find contacts.

Spotlight can save you time and energy by giving you quicker access to everything you need, whether it’s the scanner app you use once a month, or the note of songs you need to download, without having to swipe your way through distractions.

My life often feels like a disorganized maze, and it’s something I’ve had to accept comes with the diagnosis of ADHD. When I leave it untamed, I know I’m letting myself get further away from my goals.

Keeping your most important devices organized and trained to fight the chaotic instincts of ADHD is imperative to success. To do this, you need to be mindful of what your devices are for and set them up to do their jobs in a way that’s simple, easily integrated into the way your mind operates, and reliable.

Designing your home screen through this lens will give you a hub of your most important tools that are exactly where they need to be, exactly when you need them, whenever you find yourself about to enter that maze.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Keeping Everything Connected

Jordan McMahon — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 16:41:46 GMT

Getting work done often feels like an uphill battle I’m destined to lose. My brain can’t seem to differentiate between the work in front of me and my surroundings, so it constantly screams “no THIS is the important thing you need to look at RIGHT. NOW.” every time it’s made aware of something new in the environment. This means that when the two guys sitting next to me at a coffee shop start chatting about their startup idea, a friend texts me about my plans for the night, or I see my Twitter app in my dock begging to be checked, I can’t get my mind to chill out and remember they’re not as important as the deadline I’m about to miss.

Each time this happens my pile of work gets bigger and I have to spend more time and energy worrying about how to handle each of these things than actually getting work done. When I should be focusing on one project or assignment, I end up fumbling between five different things in a failed attempt to multitask. For anyone with ADHD, this makes things worse because in addition to being easily sidetracked, we’re often unable to prioritize our issues and finish them on time.

In the past I’ve dealt with this by feeling anxious and “busy” as a result of my piling workload, often leading to a sense of frustration with the things I feel are keeping me from my actual work. If you’ve found yourself discouraged by the apparent impossibility of keeping your focus on the things that matter, there’s a better way.

Make your phone the middle man

A s more of our work gets delegated to our phones, it makes sense to consider how we can best use its features to make us better at getting work done. When you’re working through smaller and more trivial tasks like sending out messages, sharing links, and anything else that tricks its way into becoming our next Important Thing, iOS’s Share Sheet is an invaluable tool in keeping us diligently focused on the things that really need our attention.

Starting with iOS 8, Apple began seriously reworking its in-app extension system, known as the Share Sheet, to go beyond sharing articles to Facebook or Twitter and making it a key player in using iOS as a productivity tool. These changes made it easier for apps to talk to each other to reduce friction and bring the functionality of your most important apps with you across iOS.

The lack of executive function that comes with ADHD is a serious deterrent to completing my work, and the Share Sheet has played an important role in mimicking executive function by telling me where I can send my information rather than having to fret over it myself. As soon as my phone is hit with something that might be useful later on, I can tap the Share button and send it to any number of apps that will keep it for when my work is done. This way I don’t have to worry that I’ll forget about it or let it fall into a pile of things I’ll forget and never see again.

Putting it to use

Before you set up your Share Sheet, it’s important to know its limitations. It’s meant to send things like audio, text, links, and videos between apps as a way to cut down on how much time you spend switching apps instead of interacting with them. It can’t streamline everything you use your phone for, but it can cut down the time you spend messing around with the app switcher and worrying about staying on track.

When you tap on the share button inside an app, let’s say Safari, you’re presented with a card with three horizontal panels. The top, AirDrop, allows you to share things between devices. Below that you’ll find the Share Extensions, where you’ll find basic functions like sending links or media selections to other apps.

Most of your time in the Share Sheet will be spent here, and you’ll find that with the right apps it can do more than just send links to your friends and family. I use mine to:

Send links to Pinner for later access and research
Create new notes or append selected text to an existing note in Bear. A recent update to the app added a full-fledged web clipper to its extension that lets you turn an entire web page into a note in Bear, much like Evernote’s clipper. I haven’t gotten to mess around with it too much yet, but it’s one of the most powerful uses of share extensions I’ve encountered.
Save an article in Pocket so I can read it later
Turn a link into a task in Todoist, which I use for job applications, things I’d like to turn into an article, or resources for an upcoming article
Create linked posts on my link-blog TypingPixels
Share links to multiple networks with a few taps using Linky
Sending articles to my Kindle via the Kindle app
Create a PDF of a web page to read in iBooks

To set yours up, tap the share button in any app, scroll all the way to the right on the middle row, and hit the “More…” button to view all of the share buttons your phone has available. A lot of them won’t really help you, but if the apps you rely on for work have an extension that can save you some time, tap the switch to enable it and get to work.

For an extension to make its way to my Share Sheet it has to be used at least once a week or significantly reduce how much time and thought I have to put into the process it replicates. It’s a rigid guideline, but without it I’ve found myself with a cluttered list of extensions that take too much time to sift through.

This has saved me countless hours by taking the primary ways I handle links and content and turning them into actionable buttons that are always two taps away.

Below Share Extensions are Action Extensions, which allow you to do more hands-on work with the content.

For more robust tasks, iOS’s Action Extensions can automate things that would otherwise take a few minutes and get you through them without a second thought. Where Share Extensions can only take content as input and output them elsewhere, Action Extensions allow you to manipulate that content by adding to it, trimming it, and changing the way it’s viewed.

Like Share Extensions, Action Extensions are entirely customizable and can take advantage of third-party apps. I’ve used mine to cut down on how much time I spend copying/pasting text, as well as running specific workflows without having to switch between my current app and Workflow to do it. My most used Actions are:

Finding a word or phrase on a web page
Running Workflows, like Tweeting a selected quote, creating a PDF in any app, using text-to-speech on an article when I can’t sit down to read it, pulling all images from a web page, and viewing older versions of a web page. (Note: The day before publishing this article, Apple acquired Workflow and began to remove some features, like Google Maps, Uber, Line, Google Chrome, and Telegram integrations, as well as submitting Workflows for other users to access)
Saving selected text to Copied, my clipboard manager of choice
Automatically pasting my passwords into a sign-in field from 1Password, which used to require switching to 1Password, logging in, selecting the password, copying it, switching back to the sign-in field, and pasting the password.

These may sound simple, but before extensions it often took me at least twice as long to get these same things done by requiring me to switch back and forth between apps every time something came up. Now it’s all waiting for me no matter what app I’m in. Since implementing this system I’ve had less instances where I feel the need to address ten things at once, and my ability to get through my workload has increased drastically.

Today’s work economy makes it hard to not feel like we have to multitask to stay afloat. Those of us with ADHD are especially bad at this, so we need to set up systems and barriers that can ensure we stay focused without letting things slip through the cracks and pile up with no clear escape route.

Once we figure out what matters most and create a way to quickly deal with everything else, we can keep our focus on what’s important and ensure our work gets done with minimal stress.

When you set it up to make transferring between tasks easier, Extensions can take that overwhelming feeling that comes with the way ADHD makes things simultaneously feel inaccessible and urgent, and make it manageable with a few taps.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Keeping Everything Connected was originally published in Startup Grind on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: The Madness of Notifications

Jordan McMahon — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 17:02:30 GMT

It’s safe to assume most of us wouldn’t run full-speed into a swarm of bees. Yet that’s exactly the feeling that comes from seeing a flood of notifications every time we check our phones.

In the same way that bees would all swarm towards us if we dove into them, our apps like to sting us into giving them the attention we need to put elsewhere. When left unchecked this leads to an overwhelming anxiety as the downpour of notifications overtakes the organization and clarity you need to get through the day anxiety-free.

That’s especially troubling when you factor in ADHD’s woes. When it feels like everything is coming after you and trying to grab the almost disheartening amount of attention you’re able to maintain, it often feels easier to ignore it all and let them work their way into the space you’ve reserved for the things that benefit you most.

I’ve let these digital bees take me away from important deadlines and moments with friends and family. It’s hard to forgive yourself for the times you’ve let news alerts or the latest happenings on Twitter get the attention that should’ve gone towards enjoying being at a Bruins game with your then-girlfriend or seeing your nine-year-old brother make the first score of his soccer game.

If this has gotten the best of you, start thinking about why it happens. As apps become a smaller part of the smartphone experience for most users, many developers have fought for a larger role in how you use your smartphone by adding push notifications to get you to open their apps more frequently, often to little benefit for its users.

While some notifications are crucial like calls, messages, task and event reminders, and bank alerts, you’ll find most apps will ask for access to your notification panel only to make it look like a poorly managed Twitter feed. I’m not sure how a note-taking app, article highlighting app, or TED’s video app would make my life better, but that doesn’t stop them from trying their hardest to break the barrier.

Anything that isn’t immediately actionable is axed

When I found myself feeling anxious every time I checked my phone, I sat down and asked myself which apps could make my life more manageable without getting in the way. There are plenty of ways to do this, but I found that taking an hour to write down every app that asks for notification permissions and try to find a way they can help me worked best. Anything that isn’t immediately actionable or doesn’t give me an idea of what needs to get done is axed.

It’s easy to sift through the garbage using this guideline because it forces you to ask yourself what your current workflow looks like and identify the habits you should develop to improve it. Once you realize that you don’t need to be pinged every time the guy you’re arguing politics with on Facebook tags you with an inflammatory comment or when someone on Instagram comments on your post telling you to follow them to get more followers, you’ll head towards a phone that isn’t shouting at you any time anything trivial happens.

After you’ve identified the apps that notify you of things that are crucial to how you operate but you’re prone to forgetting, or the times when people are trying to reach you for necessary communications, you need a plan for how to deal with these alerts.

You don’t need to be pinged every time that guy you’re arguing politics with on Facebook tags you with an inflammatory comment

Your first instinct might be to act on these notifications immediately since they were important enough to make it through your digital layoff. This is the worst habit to get into, especially with ADHD since it’s easy to bog you down with so many distractions you forget what you were doing or lose the time you needed for it.

I struggled with this for a while, but I’ve found that letting the less important apps send their alerts to your notification screen and keeping it at is effective. You’ll have a hub for everything you haven’t gotten to yet that you can sift through when you have time. If it won’t interrupt your workflow in a detrimental way and needs to be addressed quickly, iOS’s rich notifications are great because you can pull down the notification banner and get it out of the way without having to jump between apps and dive further into distractions.

For more important notifications like reminders for tasks, meetings, severe weather changes, or quickly approaching deadlines, sounds and vibrations are can ensure you’re notified as soon as you need to act on it. When you want to drown out the world and maintain focus, turn Do Not Disturb on so nothing but important calls and messages get through.

Finally, since there’s no way to prioritize notifications on iOS, use its badges to work around the flighty nature of ADHD by persistently shoving an ugly red badge onto your home screen that will drive you wild until you’ve gotten rid of it. It’s unpleasant at first but it’s a powerful way to keep you on top of the things you’re prone to forgetting.

Notifications play a major role in our lives. They remind us of the things we need to do, what’s happening in the world, and who we’re talking to. Without them most of us would let a lot of what we spend our days on fall to the wayside. But as great as it can be, it can quickly keep you from being engaged with the world around you. If you take the time to develop a way to fight this, you’ll have less stress and more time to dedicate to the things that matter.

Now that you’ve taken the time to create a system that serves you and your productive habits rather than fight against them, you can stay focused on your life’s important moments and work.

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These 9 iPhone Apps Can Help You Fight ADHD

Jordan McMahon — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 15:58:48 GMT

Getting work done starts with the device we use the most. In my case, and for many others, that’s our phone. It gives us access to an entire world of information and tools that are always within our reach.

Since we spend so much time with our phones it benefits us to think about the best ways they can serve us in our goals. This way, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing you’ll be able to get things taken care of as needed with little to no hassle.

My ADHD has caused me to spend more hours looking for the answer to the question, “how can I finally get work done?” than I have on actually getting work done. After a few years of searching, testing, and tweaking, I think I’ve found the right balance and the right apps.

While I occasionally swap out one of these apps for another as new ones become available, this basic lineup of tools gets me through the day.

If you’re struggling with ADHD, this might help you too.

Text Triage: Drafts

Drafts is my commander-in-chief in my battle against ADHD. It effectively acts as a brain dump and processor for all things text. Every time I have something that needs to be written down, I go into Drafts, type away, and then use its powerful Actions system to send it off to whatever app will process it properly.

I use it for sending ideas to my writing app or my journal app, plugging events into my calendar, creating new tasks in my todo list, sending out a tweet or Facebook message, and translating text into Spanish or Italian. Capturing text in the moment is the only way to make sure it’s still there before you’ve forgotten about it. And if you have ADHD, you probably will.

Notes: Bear

If you know somebody with ADHD, you probably see them cycle through new ideas constantly, seeming to forget about their last project the moment something newer and more exciting comes to them. For every idea we act on, there are ten that get tossed aside.

We often forget about them until months later when we say, “I had THE coolest idea for a screenplay, but…I can’t remember what it was about,” and wonder if we’re losing our minds.

I use Bear to fight this by storing all of my writings, ideas, quotes, and clips of text I’ve found in my readings so I can access them later.

What makes Bear great is its use of tags to organize, rather than folders, so you don’t have to spend too much time fiddling with organization and it can exist in multiple places at once.

When your information retention is in short supply, you need something reliable to hang onto the things your brain refuses to. Bear is the best way to do that.

Time Management:

Due

ADHD’s superpower is destroying your focus. Due is the first tool I use to keep me on task and help me stay grounded when my todo list feels overwhelming.

It’s a flexible timer that creates custom tasks with set durations so you don’t spend too much time on one activity.

I look at everything I need to do that day, figure out how much time it’s likely to take, create a timer, and then set aside time after I get through that task to reward myself. I use that reward time to take a quick walk, read an article or two from my Instapaper queue, or check in on Twitter to see what I’ve been missing.

With Due’s help I’m able to stay on task without feeling overwhelmed and giving myself time to do the things that keep me sane.

Task Management: Todoist

I’ve mastered the art of walking to a room to do something, only to forget what I needed by the time I’ve gotten there. When you have ADHD it comes with the territory. It’s frustrating, but it’s not a huge problem until it threatens your productivity.

That same forgetfulness has cost me due dates on assignments, forgetting to schedule appointments, missing deadlines on job applications, and countless other tasks I’ve since forgotten about because that’s the way it works.

The answer to this is finding a todo list app that shows your tasks in a meaningful and digestible fashion while making it quick and simple to get my tasks into the system. I’ve tried almost every productivity app on the App Store, and I’ve found Todoist to be the best at keeping my life from falling apart.

Todoist shines in its simplicity and input handling. Its clean interface makes viewing your tasks at a glance pleasant and avoids being overwhelming. There’s also a karma system that makes completing tasks feel more like an achievement and less like just a check mark on a wall of tasks.

While many todo apps offer granular details that can be modified for each person’s unique workflow, these apps often require more time and research to perfect than is good for someone who gets sidetracked easily.

Todoist offers enough power to not require one of those apps while presenting it in a way that’s accessible to new users and gets out of the way. Its natural-language input system is leagues ahead of the competition: you can say things like “Publish article tomorrow at 9” and it’ll remind you the next day to hit that publish button.

After submitting your task, you’re left in the same input bar so you can quickly begin typing another task. This is great for the times where you’re in a hurry and need to jot down a few tasks at once.

Nearly all of this is offered for free, with labels and collaboration costing $30 per year. Most users will find the free tier is perfectly fine, though, so it’s a hard app to beat.

Scheduling: Fantastical

Fantastical is the closest I’ve found to the perfect calendar app, though I’m not sure such a thing exists. Its killer feature is natural language input, just like Todoist but significantly more powerful.

For my fast-paced ADHD brain, being able to talk to my phone like a human being is invaluable. Instead of spending time tweaking each input box to make sure it’s all exactly right, I just have to say, “Doctor’s appointment tomorrow from 930–10” or “workout every night from 8–930” and it’s taken care of.

Fantastical makes time management simple by requiring minimal effort to schedule new appointments and let you get back to what you were doing.

Habit Building: Productive

ADHD is the antithesis to consistency and consistency is the key to success. While there’s no magic cure, a good habit-building app can help keep you on track to reach your goals.

Productive is my favorite due to its elegant and simple design. It also has great statistics for data nerds to see how their habits have improved over time to keep you motivated.

The key to Productive, though, is its reminders. ADHD makes remembering things an uphill battle so being nagged by the app every day to call your parents, work out, or write in your journal, can mean the difference between getting things done and continuing the vicious cycle of thinking Today’s The Day I Finally Do That Thing I’ve Always Wanted To Do.

Journaling:

Day One

I have a lot of trouble articulating my thoughts, mostly because my brain likes to jump from topic to topic and can’t store information very long. Journaling seems like an odd solution, but it can make a world of difference.

Setting aside time each day to talk about anything that’s on your mind has the effect of, over time, building your articulation and learning how to get your point across better. Since it’s a private medium you can see how you’ve improved without exposing your thoughts or flaws to the world, which is a huge plus.

What makes Day One great is its clean and attractive interface, but its power lies in its multiple journals feature. I have one set up for daily journaling, one for a “personal twitter” to keep my impulsive tweets to myself and avoid embarrassment, things that made me smile, and quotes. It’s like a digital scrapbook that can make you a better thinker along the way.

Distraction Blocking:

1Blocker

The web is one of the greatest innovations of our time, but it has also been one of the biggest inhibitors of getting work done.

For those with ADHD, it’s even worse, because it can make three hours on Reddit or Twitter feel like three minutes. Suddenly, you look up at the time and see you’ve got ten minutes before your essay is due and you haven’t even started.

1Blocker is great if you’re prone to wasting too much time on distracting websites every day. You can set it to prohibit you from viewing the websites that keep you from being productive.

1Blocker makes this simple and has the added benefit of creating a more pleasant web experience by blocking out intrusive and bad ads.

Archiving: Pinner/Pocket

At least once per week I’ll say to a friend or client, “Oh yeah! I read a really interesting article about that…but I can’t remember what they said,” which is usually met with blank stares that seem to say, “Okay cool, got any more useless comments to make?”

That’s standard procedure for someone with ADHD. We love learning new things and seeking out information, but our brains aren’t well-equipped to absorb and retain that information.

While that spaciness may always be there, effectively storing and managing your data can make it easier to access the Interesting and Relevant Article You Just Read when it comes up in conversation.

While bookmarking works for many people, I’ve found that I need a more robust and manageable solution. I looked for something with powerful search functionality and a straightforward organizational capabilities. For the purposes of retaining and easily accessing information, Pocket and Pinner have changed the way my mind operates.

I grouped these together because while they serve different purposes for me, they work the same way. Pinner and Instapaper serve as archives for links and articles you want to access later. I use Pinner as sort of an extension of my brain to hang onto things I won’t be able to remember but want to have on hand for reference.

Pocket is where articles I’d like to read but don’t want to get to while I’m working live. Both have great tagging systems, so keeping things organized is a breeze, and they make sure that article that just taught you a new skill isn’t forgotten once you’ve closed the tab.

Wrapping Up

The unfortunate truth of ADHD is that it’s with you for life

By no means is dealing with ADHD easy. You’re constantly forgetting what you were working on, struggling to articulate your thoughts well, and finding it impossible to understand or process what you’re reading no matter how hard you try.

But that diagnosis isn’t a death sentence. If you seek out the tools and methods that can help supplement your shortcomings, you’ll be able to achieve your goals and reduce the stress that comes with ADHD.

I’m writing an ongoing series on how I’ve used technology to help get work done despite my ADHD. Check out more on my page. Thanks for reading!

Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Your Second Brain

Jordan McMahon — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 17:58:26 GMT

I spend more time questioning my intelligence than I care to admit.

Though there are many reasons I can justify this self-doubt to myself, I find myself in a constant battle with what I call the Research Rabbit Hole. At least once a week I find an interesting topic, ranging from what dogs dream about to the mechanics of airplanes, and spend hours finding out as much about it as possible. For those few hours I’m an expert on the topic, but by the next day at least half of the information is gone, and I realize I’ve wasted my time and set aside my responsibilities for something I can’t even recall.

This often makes me feel inferior to my friends and family because without ADHD and its inability to focus long enough to store information, they can commit important bits of information to memory and recall it when it’s relevant. I don’t have that luxury, and for years this held me back from my goals. It also led to a sense of guilt for succumbing to the trap of the Research Rabbit Hole and losing time that should have been spent on work. In those times, I feel like a failure.

Five years ago, while I was in undergrad, Thomas Houston wrote a piece for The Verge that gave me a glimmer of hope by presenting the concept that I could use software to overcome the struggle of never remembering that Totally Relevant Information.

Houston discusses how Evernote reflects the idea of Vannevar Bush’s Memex, a desk-like device that could store books, magazines, records, and communications in a way that made them easily accessible for research and work to provide an “enlarged intimate supplement to one’s memory.” He argued that Evernote served this purpose through its ability to store links, a web clipper to capture relevant parts of web pages, and store articles, ideas, and checklists.

My habits and ideas about information storage changed post-graduation, so I needed a new system. After extensive research I developed a three-tier system that provided all of the same functions of Evernote without the clutter. Each tier focuses on a different aspect of Bush’s initial system while still providing a simple and powerful workflow that enhances my productivity and recollection.

Through this system I’ve been able to back up my brain the way Houston described without falling victim to information overload and keep everything organized, ensuring that everything has a proper home.

Your Digital Filing Cabinet

My first step was to create a contingency plan against the Research Rabbit Hole. Too often I toss aside my work to dig into a new topic that feels more interesting than whatever my actual work is. This leads to missed deadlines, abandoned projects, and lost ideas. To avoid the loss of work time and the associated guilt, I had to find something that would allow me to store that research somewhere that’s easily accessible and suited for having tons of information dumped into it at once.

For that, Pinboard has served my purposes better than Evernote did, and it’s been crucial in how I store and organize the information I take in and seek out.

At its core Pinboard is a bookmarking service that syncs across all of your devices. Where it stands out from traditional bookmarking is its tagging and plugins with other services. These strengths allow me to prioritize my day’s work and save the trivial for another day.

Whenever I come across an article I’d like to read for research purposes, I send it straight to Pinboard and tag it with “to-research” so that when I have time I can come back to it.

It doesn’t end there, though. Pinboard acts as a digital archive of everything my brain can’t seem to hang onto. Tagging articles and links by topic and purpose helps me secure the tips and insights within each and switch back to what I was doing in just a few seconds.

By organizing everything I’ve read or would like to read to increase my skills and knowledge in one organized place, I’ve managed to work around the forgetfulness of ADHD by keeping all of the would-be-lost information in my pocket, ready to be pulled out and referenced with a moment’s notice.

Your Digital Newsstand

While Pinboard works well as a backup of my brain, it isn’t a great read it later service, something I’ve found to be a necessary tool in keeping me from distractions while I work.

Instead of pulling away from what I’m doing to read an interesting article, with one click I can save it to my Pocket queue where it lives until I have some free time to give it my full attention without ditching my responsibilities and hating myself for it later.

Pocket’s intent is to create a clean, attractive, distraction-free space for reading. Whenever you have a free moment, you can jump right into your personally-curated list of the best content the Internet has to offer.

In the spirit of making things easily accessible to save time, Pocket’s tagging system, which in many ways mirrors Pinboard’s, can help sort your articles to make what you’re looking for easy to find. If you’re looking for a long read, just search your longform tag and Pocket will show you everything you haven’t gotten to. If you’re looking for something written by a particular author, or need everything that mentions a specific topic, Pocket’s search has you covered.

Once I’ve finished reading an article, I archive it, at which point an IFTTT applet triggers and sends the article to Pinboard. Once it’s properly stored and tagged in Pinboard, I can walk away knowing that even if I’ve forgotten what an article said and what part resonated with me, I can get back to it with a few taps and use the information as needed.

Your Everywhere Notepad

While Pocket and Pinboard work great for storing links, you need a home for everything else, such as quotes, ideas, outlines, lists, and anything that have once lived in a notebook. There are plenty of great text editors, word processors, and note-taking apps that do this well, but I’ve found Bear to be the most capable for both storing notes and getting work done.

Bear serves two purposes in my work: storing notes and other bits of text, and giving me a clean, distraction-free workspace for my writing. Bear excels at both.

With it I can input anything from a quote I’ll want to access later, my weekly shopping list, outlines, and early-stage ideas for articles, and organize them in a way that makes sorting a breeze. While many note-taking apps rely on folders or notebooks for organization, Bear uses a tagging system that is leagues ahead of anything I’ve seen from other apps.

This tagging system allows notes to exist in multiple locations, so your notes can always be in front of you whenever you need them. For large projects, this can’t be beat. I use it for planning out articles and mapping out my ADHD series. Each note associated with an article can be tagged as an idea, draft, completed article, and archived article. By doing this I can track the status of each article and see how much work is left on each one. When finding what you need to get work done is a constant struggle, this guidance is invaluable.

Another strength of Bear is that you can link notes together so if you need to reference one note while you’re working in another, a quick markdown link will give you easier access to that note without too much clicking around.

When I’m working on an ongoing series of articles, this allows me to create a master note with links to each installment that I can check off as they’re completed. Without the clutter of multiple windows or having to sift through long lists, tracking large projects becomes a stress-free process.

While Bear appears to be a minimal app for storing text, it’s packed with powerful features under the hood that make it the most versatile and effective text-based app I’ve found on iOS.

Its support of iOS’s x-callback-url schemes allows for streamlining the creation of notes and linking Bear to other apps. I’ve used this to create Launcher and Workflow sequences that allow me to access the articles I’m currently working on, use voice dictation to get my ideas recorded, and search specific tags and terms to find the notes I need without the hassle of tapping and scrolling. You can also create url schemes for apps like Drafts to create new notes and attach text to existing ones.

You may not need everything Bear has to offer, but if you struggle with organizing notes and staying on top of larger text-based projects, which many of us with ADHD do, no other app has come close to Bear in relieving me of that stress.

My current system isn’t perfect and it hasn’t completely absolved me of my struggles, but it’s helped support me where I’m weakest. By creating these purpose and function-driven hubs for storage, I can go into each app knowing what I’m looking for and maintain focus by removing all clutter.

By taking the time to organize my links, articles, and notes in a way that mirrors how my brain references them, I’ve cut down on the time I spend sifting through information and can spend more time focusing on my actual work rather than setting it up.

In a perfect world there would be a cure for my poor memory and lack of executive function, and maybe some day there will be. Until then I have to rely on the software at my disposal to work for the parts of my brain that suffer the most from ADHD. This means finding tools that are simple in presentation, powerful in their ability to work with you rather than against you, and thoughtful in how they present information to you. Once you’ve found these tools you can step into your work at a moment’s notice and nothing the outside world throws at you can get in your way.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: Everything At Your Fingertips

Jordan McMahon — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 18:05:18 GMT

I spend most of my working day on my feet. This is great because I get restless, but it means I’m not always able to quickly jot things down or get to things that need immediate attention. As a result I often push those things to the back of my forgetful brain and lose track of them before I’m able to sit down and tend to them.

I’ve worked around this problem by always having my phone close by and using it as my digital utility belt, containing all of my essential tools and keeping them within arm’s reach. Without it, I’d be no more successful than I was a year after being diagnosed with ADHD.

In eighth grade my teacher confronted me in front of my mother about my poor grades. She asked me why I hadn’t been turning in my homework. When her questions were met with stutters and half-hearted excuses, she asked me to hand her my binder. When she saw what was inside, she unzipped it completely and turned it upside down so all of the crumbled and unorganized papers inside fell to the floor.

“Perhaps if your son organized his paperwork he could actually do his homework and turn it in so we wouldn’t need to have these meetings,” she said. I was humiliated. It wasn’t that I neglected organizing my work, it was a foreign concept to me. I operated under the assumption that I could place everything into one location and I would remember to get back to them later.

I thought about those words a lot as I looked to my iPhone for a solution to the poorly-managed pile of tasks and chores ADHD had left me with.

Widgets are always a right-swipe away

I’ve found iOS widgets to be the most powerful way to keep me productive and stress-free by providing a home for the tools and information I rely on to get my work done.

Widgets are always a right-swipe away from your lock screen, home screen, and notifications panel, so no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you can grab your phone and find what you’re looking for.

My widget panel contains all of the apps I use throughout the day, and nothing more, to provide a distraction-free environment for quickly sifting through tasks. With it I’m able to record ideas while they’re still fresh in my mind, jump right into one of the projects I need to spend some time on, and check my calendar and todo list to get through my daily tasks.

Swipe right for productivity

I’ve avoided over-complicating this panel because it can easily be weighed down with items that take up more space than they provide assistance.

When you’re organizing your widgets, it’s important to know where to start so you don’t find yourself adding every widget available and being so overwhelmed that you never want to access them again.

To avoid this, think about the role your phone plays in how you get work done. Then, look at the apps you use the most for that work to see how having quick access to them can make getting your work done faster and easier.

When you’re done you’ll have a focused and organized page of your most important apps that are always a swipe and a tap away.

With a clean, simple, and goal-oriented widget panel, you can streamline your workflow and visualize how your apps can better work together to save time and energy, both of which are in short supply when struggling with ADHD.

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Wiring Your Tech to Fight ADHD: A Place for Ideas

Jordan McMahon — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:28:35 GMT

One of the perks of ADHD is that when your mind is always running at a seemingly unstoppable rate you’re bound to come up with some great ideas. Unfortunately, the rate at which you tend to forget those ideas is often even faster. This has caused me to lose ideas for screenplays, articles, and the occasional funny tweet. It’s also caused me to neglect scheduling events, putting tasks into my todo list, sending important messages, and lose other tidbits of text that I might have needed to get my work done.

After being left with notions of great ideas that I couldn’t recall, it was time to find a solution to the forgetfulness ADHD gifted me with. For the past several years I’ve been using a two-part solution that ensures my ideas are captured, stored, and managed effectively no matter where I am.

The first piece of this system is a Field Notes notebook I carry with me whenever I can. It’s great for writing down little ideas and quips, but it isn’t always ideal. The problem with relying on a notebook is that sometimes you’re not in a place where you can write something down, and your ideas don’t stop when your ability to take note of them does.

Since productivity starts with the device we use the most, I turned to my phone in the hopes that an app could save my ideas from being lost forever. In my search, there was no shortage of note-taking apps that served this purpose, but I’ve found Drafts to be the best tool for the job. It set the standard for managing text and it’s the best way to make sure my ideas are written down while they’re still fresh in my mind.

Your ideas come first; you can organize and take action on them once they’re secure

Drafts sets itself apart from the competition by working under the assumption that your ideas come first; you can organize and take action on them once they’re secure. When you open the app you’re greeted by a blank note page and a keyboard so you can immediately get to typing, ensuring that you have time to get the idea out before your brain convinces you it has a more important thought to get to.

The power of Drafts lies in what happens next. Most note-taking apps try to work as a place to store your notes; Drafts has little interest in filling that role. Instead it acts as an operator who will take your text as it comes in and send it to its proper destination using its powerful Actions system. Whether I’m tracking an idea for an upcoming article, messing with a potentially funny tweet, planning my next appointment, inputting a task into my todo list, or adding ideas to an existing note, Drafts is equipped to handle that and more. It’s become the central place where all of my thoughts and ideas begin.

Given the abundance of apps that Drafts can integrate with, it’s easy to build a collection of Actions that can be difficult to sort through. Drafts manages this by letting you create organized tabs for your Actions. By creating silos for different types of Actions you’ll ensure that the time between hitting the last key and recording your thoughts is painless and swift.

To avoid the clutter that reinforces the troubles of ADHD, it’s best to separate your Actions by the types of text they handle and what purposes they serve in your work. I have mine organized into four tabs, each labeled by a single emoji to keep the tabs short and make their purposes clear: Writing, Productivity, Social, and Tools. With these four tabs I’m able to quickly find the Action I need without much effort so I can get back to work.

When you’re prone to forgetting a majority of the thoughts that enter your brain each day, every second counts. Orchestrating your system to resist this and keep track of your ideas takes time, but Drafts is your best shot at logging the most important things that come to mind, whatever they may be.

Gone are the days of racking my brain trying to recall that Great Idea I Can’t Remember for the Life of Me.

Throughout my four years with Drafts I’ve gone from ineffectively using it to store all of my ideas the same way I would Apple’s stock Notes.app, to flooding it with actions I never actually used, and finally letting it take its place as the most frequently-used app on my phone. Gone are the days of racking my brain trying to recall that Great Idea I Can’t Remember for the Life of Me.

Drafts can’t solve the problem of a spacey and forgetful brain, but it can alleviate the pain of not having a way to record your thoughts before they’re gone. It can be overwhelming at first, but with time it can be a powerful tool in your fight against ADHD. You’ll be able to rest easy knowing that your best ideas are safe and sound, ready to be accessed whenever you need them.

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