An ADHD Guide to Self-Improvement Without a Schedule

The Problem May Not Be You, It May Be Your Clock

The years outside of grad school were rough for me as a person with undiagnosed ADHD. Suddenly, no one was making my schedules anymore, and no one cared if I kept them. I couldn’t use the threat of a bad grade, professorial disapproval, or academic FOMO (yes, it’s a thing, I’m a nerd) as motivation to get up with my alarm, leave the house on time and looking presentable, or go to bed early for a good night’s rest.

Slowly but surely, my days became a haze. “Time blindness” (or dyschronometria) mixed with the inability to recall what I did yesterday or even that morning kept everything out of focus. There was no context for what I did, the way I felt, or when things happened. Finally, when it became too uncomfortable and began impacting my quality of life, I decided to put myself on a schedule.

For a week, I kept to that schedule like a drill sergeant:

• 5:30am: Wake up
• 5:45am: Leave for the gym
• 6:00am-6:45am: Work out while listening to an audiobook
• 7:00am: Shower and dress for the day
• 7:30am: Make a healthy breakfast while listening to a news podcast
• 8:00am: Be on my way to the corner coffee shop for an hour of pleasure reading before the work day began

I felt like the happiest, most productive person on the planet. My anxiety (that constant lingering fear that I was missing something) decreased. I had enough energy to get through the day and got sleepy at an appropriate time of night. Most importantly, I felt like a more moral, disciplined person. See? If I really set my mind to it, I could live a well-ordered, intentional, and timely life.

And then the next week began, and I hit snooze on the alarm. For those of you who also struggle with executive dysfunction slumps, you know what happened next. The whole routine went down the toilet with that single deviation. My energy was gone, and now it was worse than before: I wasn’t just back to a perpetual state of contextless almost-lateness, I also knew I could do better and was failing.

This was my endless spiral for five years. I tried everything: apps, spreadsheets, self-help books, accountability buddies. Sometimes I kept my self-improvement schedule going for two weeks, sometimes even three… before inevitably throwing the whole thing out the window and starting over. All the while building up a thick patina of shame.

How I Broke The Cycle By Breaking My Clock

That changed in December of 2022. Not only had I spent all of that year in therapy and on medication for my ADHD, I had also been deconstructing a lot of assumptions about work, hustle culture, and how capitalism reinforces our views of what a good or valuable person does with their day. All this good, introspective work under my belt, I set about ADHD-proofing my goals for 2023. I had a theory, and wanted to see if it worked.

Well, it did. I’m on month three, and still going strong, despite hitting multiple slumps that would have previously knocked me completely off my game. In fact, I’ve been able to be so consistent that I am starting to form new habits intentionally, a skillset I used to imagine was on par with fire eating or tightrope walking: freakishly impressive and technically possible, but definitely not something I would ever be able to do myself.

Here is a list of just some of the things I’ve been able to do every day as a result of these last three months. For some of you, this list will be deeply unimpressive, but for my executive dysfunction friends, you will understand:

• Make my bed every single morning
• Maintain a multi-step morning and evening skincare routine
• Take all my medication and extra supplements (also morning and evening)
• Track my mood throughout the day
• Monitor my meals and caffeine intake
• Fill up my brand new annual planner every week
• Commit to a weekly writing practice and actually look forward to it
• Feed my sourdough starters so I can bake regularly
• Accurately predict my energy levels to avoid crashes
• Get rid of the anxiety, guilt, and shame around how I live my life

For the first time I am unbothered, focused, in my lane, and moisturized. (Spoiler alert: it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.) So… what did I do differently this time to make it stick? The answer is ridiculously simple.

I quit schedules.

My New Self-Improvement Plan: No Plan!

It all started when I bought a new 2023 annual planner for the first time since COVID rendered my 2020 agenda full of travel plans depressingly useless. I knew I would have to do something different this time if I was going to actually use this new planner and not have it languishing in a dusty corner by mid-January.

So, on a whim, I decided to use my planner as a tracker instead. The idea of pre-planning a daily schedule filled my head with white noise, but the idea of tracking what I did after I did it tickled the curious part of my brain. Did I have any patterns I wasn’t seeing that might be hurting me? Would it be easier to set realistic goals for myself if I knew what my baseline was?

(Maybe that’s a “Well, duh!” moment for some people, but not for someone with ADHD. As I said before, my short-term memory is crap, and the dyschronometria doesn’t help. Assuming I could just know the patterns in my life and recall information about my baseline is what had been biting me in the butt this whole time. Acknowledging I didn’t have innate access to that information, and so needed to gather it manually, was a huge breakthrough.)

The rule is simple: the goal isn’t to do things, the goal is to log what I do, when I do it. Even if that is nothing. Am I having a great week? Awesome, writing down all the productive things I did is a reward in and of itself. Am I having a slump week? Cool, as long as I write it down, I still win (and it becomes a bonus exercise in fighting my perfectionism).

I don’t force myself to do anything at a certain time, or in a certain way. No more getting up at X time, reading for Y number of minutes, exercising Z number of days. I either do it, or I don’t. As long as I write it down, I’m solid. No judgement, just data.

I also am intentionally utilizing my dopamine hits. Instead of chasing the dopamine high I used to get by playing hookie from a schedule, I’m focusing on the little joyful tingles I get when I update my tracker, tick off a checkbox, or look at the addictively color-coded graphs and charts I’m able to create with the data I’ve been gathering. It feels like progress, and progress feels good.

The Cool Things I Am Learning About Myself Without A Schedule

I’ve been able to uncover about myself after three months of tracking this information. In addition to the expected areas of improvement (less time watching TV, should eat lunch more often), I’m also finding out a lot of very validating things about myself.

I Have A Pretty Consistent Internal Clock

I actually do have a schedule, I just didn’t realize it! I naturally get up at relatively the same time every day, I drink the same amount of caffeine (most days), I get to work around the same time, I spend about the same time every day relaxing in front of the TV, and I go to bed within the same two-hour stretch (a whole two hours earlier than I assumed) most nights.

My Moods Are Usually Above Average

Because I’ve been tracking my moods every day, I can tell I’ve been pretty consistently at a 6 (on a scale from 1–10 where 1 is “hide under the bed” and 10 is “sing from the rooftops”). I’ve had more many more 7–8 days than I have 3–4 days, and when I do have a bad day, I can look back and remind myself it hasn’t been a whole week of misery.

I Get A Lot of Shit Done Every Week

Completing small chores, tasks, and appointments used to get lost in the shuffle. Now, because I track what I do every week, I’m realizing that I can be extremely productive even on days I feel were a wash. Turns out, I’m out here planning ahead for trips, conferences, doctor’s appointments, dinner parties well in advance. I’m even done with my taxes, and it’s only early February! But because I wasn’t tracking that stuff before, I wasn’t giving myself credit for any of it.

I’ve Got A Pretty Good Idea of How Much I Spend

Part of this “tracking not planning” routine has spilled over into my financing habits. Instead of building (and then immediately abandoning) a monthly budget, I just track what I spend when I spend it (if it’s over $10). I tallied everything up for January this week, and turns out I spent almost exactly what I expected to (a surprise vet visit pushed me over the edge).

My Creativity Is More Intact Than I Thought

In addition to tracking my budget and my daily routine, I have been tracking how I’m spending my free time. How often am I reading? How about writing? I was ready to look at my averages at the end of my first month of tracking and wince… but that wasn’t the case! Turns out, I’m reading a lot more than I thought, writing a lot more than I thought, and also finding time to reintroduce some old forgotten hobbies like piano and watercolor painting. Not to mention time spent cooking and baking!

Avoiding Energy Crashes and Conserving Spoons Is Easier

Anyone familiar with “spoon theory” knows what being “out of spoons” feels like. Not knowing where I was spending my spoons meant that I regularly would get to the end of a day or week and crash. Knowing where I’m putting my energy every day helps me to better regulate the energy I’ve got left, and be mindful about scheduling things that would require “spoons” later on in the week.

There’s A Secret Surplus of Free Time on My Calendar

One cool thing about tracking how long you do things for is that you can see exactly where your weekly allotment of 168 hours is going. Now that I can see the time I spend sleeping, working, and relaxing, I am realizing I’ve got about 20 hours every week that are completely unaccounted for. Where is that time going, and how could I be spending it? What a wonderful gift to give myself!

I also want to make sure I’m addressing the many privileges I’ve got that makes this no-schedule self-improvement plan possible in the first place. Not only do I have a remote-first job without set on-the-clock hours, I also have the benefit of a diagnosis, a year of therapy, and access to medication. My partner (also ADHD) understands and supports my goal, and I don’t have kids or particularly time-intensive pets to take care of. So while I do think this method of self-improvement without a schedule could help a lot of people who are like me, I also understand if it’s not viable for some.

And of course, the end result of this no-schedule method still is self-improvement. When I’m ready, I’ll take all the data I’ve been gathering and build on the habits I’ve been able to form: setting reasonable, incremental goals and tracking how those goals impact my life. That mindfulness will also help me to slow down and take stock more regularly of what I really want and need to be happy.

If you are looking at your New Year’s Resolutions and feeling the anxiety, guilt, and shame of trying and failing to plan out hour-by-hour perfection, ask yourself: Is the problem you, or is the problem your schedule?