My ADHD Executive Functionality Capabilities are a Trash Fire Floating Down a Toxic River of Unfinished Hopes, So I Tried These to Get My Shit Together
Watching my productivity hopelessly sink in an ocean of task items, but at least at the paper boat is really pretty
The older I get, the more I notice my executive dysfunction reaching new heights.
Quick aside for anyone too lazy to read Wikipedia: executive dysfunction is your brain’s inability to control thoughts, feelings, and actions—not the other ED. Either way, failure abounds if I’m not careful.
Here’s my journey through various productivity systems, with mixed success. Maybe you’ll relate, maybe you’ll have solutions, or maybe we can just commiserate together.
Remember the Milk → Todoist → Things
I started with Remember the Milk—my first-ever to-do app. I barely knew how to write down tasks, let alone remember to check them off. Obviously, the problem was the app, not me, so I moved to Todoist. Then I spent $50 on Things because, clearly, what I needed was to ignore my tasks in a more aesthetically pleasing interface.
Obsidian Tasks Plugin
Because what my ADHD brain really needed was even more Markdown syntax to forget. A simple checkbox (- [ ] Remember the milk!) wasn’t enough—this Obsidian Tasks plugin adds so many emojis and identifiers that picking up dry cleaning starts to look like a line of COBOL.
Sure, it works, but do I really need my task list to look like an emoji movie exploded in my notes?
It looks… fine? It’s fine. I guess. The tasks plugin goes heavy on the emojis, that’s all I’m saying.
But is it petty that I’m not crazy about the visual appeal? That I don’t love how the emojis clash with the rest of my Obsidian setup? Yes, it is! But I’m the one who has to stare at it without giving it side-eye, not you. It just didn’t fly for me.
Amplenote
Overview: I found out about Amplenote through a productivity influencer on YouTube who swore it was the only tool he’d ever need.
What appealed to me: I took it seriously and dove in for one reason: tasks were assigned urgency scores from 1 to 100. One hundred means everything’s on fire, fix it now. Turns out that I respond well to urgency!
Result: I spent three days setting up the perfect system, used it for a week, then ghosted it harder than a Gen-Zer on Sniffies. (If you know, you know.)
Obsidian’s GTD Site
Someone built an entire Obsidian vault to demonstrate Getting Things Done (GTD)—yet another productivity system by some random white dude everyone seems to worship. But I discovered something valuable: the Next Action List. Game-changer. Instead of a million overwhelming tasks, you focus on immediate next actions. Sure, the implementation uses the DataView plugin and more complexity than necessary, but it works—for now.
The Truth About Productivity Systems
Look, I’ve tried enough productivity systems to write a book. (I won’t, because I’d add it to my task list and never finish it.)
Here’s what I’ve learned: the perfect system is whatever you’ll actually use consistently. For me, that’s Obsidian for brain dumps plus a GTD page for next actions. Maybe it won’t be exactly this for you and that’s okay!
Maybe I’ll try something new next week. Stay tuned.
If I remember.