Calendaring: Become a Time Tamer and Gain Control of the Fourth Dimension!

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🗓 Calendars and ADHD: Taming Time, One Block at a Time

We're ADHD coaches who rely on calendars religiously, but we get that calendaring can be a hard habit to form. This post is your one-stop shop for ADHD + calendars, plus a bunch of tools to help you make time feel a little more real, visual, and manageable. Let us know if there's something we've missed and we'll add it in.

Why Calendars matter:

Calendars can help us counteract:

  • Time blindness
  • Working memory gaps
  • Forgetting what we committed to
  • The tendency to say "yes" when we already have plans
  • A life full of "oh, crap" moments

🌀"Time is an Illusion"

Author Dent and Ford Perfect from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Quote reading, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

Following and feeling linear time is so hard with ADHD.

It sometimes seems like everyone else naturally grasps time like it's a sense organ they were born with. But we're working with a brain that doesn't experience time the same way. A brain that can be frequently surprised by the time passing and the time available.

We can keep working towards a time goal that another person might have already accepted isn't possible. Or be shocked that it's suddenly 7 pm and we were supposed to wrap up a task by 4 pm.

👀 Calendars let us share in the Illusion

Seeing is believing

Time often doesn't feel real until it's visual. We tend to be visual thinkers and can use that strength to finally comprehend time. When we can SEE how those two things overlap, it's easier to get that we can't really get from point A to point B in 10 minutes, in time to change our plan or let someone know.

Calendars don't just help us remember what's happening. They help us believe it's real, believe we have time, or believe we don't.

That's a big deal.

  • Visual structure gives our brains something to grab onto.
  • Calendars offload mental load and create trust in our systems.
  • Calendars can alert us to a thing we've completely spaced on.

📺 Watch: Why Calendars are Magic with ADHD

🧭 Calendars Aren't the Boss of You

Calendars are your sidekick to help you become the person you want to be.

We know that for some people, Calendars can feel like shackles. But we want to help you reframe them as tools:

A male wearing sunglasses, looking straight with a stern face. Quote reads, “What if I told you a calendar can be your friend, tool, and ally”

🛠️ A sidekick to help fight time blindness 🧱 A way to see your commitments clearly 💪 A resource to help you say no (or yes!) with confidence

Calendars don't control you. They help you take control back.

Build Calendar Habits

Some well-meaning person has probably looked down their nose at you and said, "Use a planner," as though that could solve everything. It's obviously not that simple. We need to build in positive habits around calendars to make good use of them. That's not easy, but it is possible.

Actually put stuff on your calendar

  • Appointments? Yes.
  • Deadlines? Absolutely.
  • Personal commitments like "do taxes," "return library books," or "hide from that social obligation"? Also yes.

Hard landscape is minimum viable

What should be on your calendar?

  • Appointments with other people
  • Things that absolutely must happen at a certain time
  • Deadlines with real-world consequences

To the left is a container of gushers, all the colors are mixed together. To the right is the same container but all the gushers have been separated into their corresponding colors.

Start there. That's your hard landscape. Think of events that are hard to move, like the trees and hills in the landscape. These are the things you need to talk to someone else about if you need to make a change.

Everything else — routines, flexible tasks, ideal schedules — should layer on top, not mix in. If you choose to include those at all.

Trust starts with clarity.

🧬The 3 Evolutions of Calendar Use

It's not all or nothing--your system can grow with you.

Top of image says, "what calendar evolution are you?" option one is Squirtle, option two is Wartortle, and option three is Blastoise

The above habits will give you a functional calendar and some amazing quality of life improvements. But if you ever wonder what leveling up beyond that looks like, here it is:

  • Level 1: Squirtle -- You're adding appointments when you remember. 🙌 That's a big step. This is the most important stage-- the other stages can't happen without this foundation.
  • Level 2: Wartortle -- Wartortles review their calendar to see what's upcoming. In the morning or the night before, they check out what's on the horizon so they're less likely to completely forget appointments.
  • Level 3: Blastoise -- Blastoises look ahead and anticipate problems before they happen.

Which Pokemon Calendar user are you?

The Pokemon, “Squirtle”

There's nothing wrong with a Squirtle! They're adorable! And it's a big deal to make the habit of putting things in your calendar! And, also, evolving can be fun!

🔮 Blastoise Mode: Learning to Look Ahead

This one's tough. Looking ahead takes time, space, focus, and a willingness to pause the "catching up on work" mode long enough to prevent future emergencies.

But when you can do it? Magic happens:

  • You notice that the upcoming conference you forgot to book a hotel for.
  • You realize you're too tired the day after a new client meeting, so you can start blocking that off in your calendar instead of being surprised at how little you get done every time.
  • You see the bottlenecks and rearrange before they explode.

We use The Weekly Review as the time that we set aside to look ahead in our calendar.

The future isn't scary when you can see it coming.

🧰Tips for Calendar Success

💍One calendar to rule them all

Please, for the love of your executive function, don't try to maintain multiple different calendars.

We're not saying never use paper again (we love stickers!), but pick one place to hold your actual time-based data. That's your real calendar. Choose the thing you're more likely to check and update (not try to remember to add the event "later").

Everything else is a bonus.

Sync if you want. Color-code if you want. Mount an iPad to your wall if that helps (we may have done this). But the minute your calendar stops feeling like a single source of truth, it stops working.

💪 How Calendars Help You Say "No" (or at Least, "Let Me Check")

🛑 Say "Let Me Check" Before You Say "Yes"

Here's the deal: ADHD often comes with impulsive "yesses": people-pleasing yesses, and "I totally forgot I have a dentist appointment that day" yesses.

But when you can see your time, it's easier to say:

"Let me check my calendar and get back to you."

Seriously, life-changing.

Two males are wrestling, quote above the arms states, “Considered reliable.” The arm to the right has the statement, “people who say no (when needed). To the right the words read, “people who say yes (when possible)

You can improve your temptation to overcommit further by capturing the other things you've promised yourself or others you'd do:

  • We want to help.
  • We forget we already said yes to something else.
  • We feel like we should be able to "squeeze it in."

📺 Resources:

🪦Watch out for the Wishful graveyard

You know those calendar items you never do? Like the bedtime you haven't followed in three years? Or the aspirational "Write book proposal" blocked out in a bright purple square every Sunday from 10-2?

Yeah. That's the Wishful Graveyard.

If your calendar is full of ghosts, you won't trust it. And if you don't trust it, you won't use it. Let it go. Bury it for real. Your future self will thank you.

🎥 Can You Use Your Calendar to Track Tasks?

Weekly review (last newsletter)

When do you check your calendar? For many ADHD folks, the answer is "only when something is already on fire."

Enter the Weekly Review: a simple once-a-week ritual that helps you:

  • Check your upcoming week
  • Spot any lurking surprises
  • Reschedule the things you meant to do
  • Reflect and reset (without spiraling)

👯‍♂️ Better Together: Review with Friends

A woman peeking through a big leaf, wording states, “we need visuals”

We don't expect anyone to become a time management wizard suddenly. That's why we host a free weekly review livestream every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific, 12:00 p.m. Eastern.

Join us. Click here to get the calendar link or visit the channel. Or find an IRL buddy. Body doubling works for calendaring, too.

Resources for your Calendar Journey:

🙋‍♀️ Your Turn: Tell Us!

We'd love to hear from you--pick one (or more!) of these to reply to:

  1. What's your biggest calendar win (or flop)?
  2. For calendars, do you prefer digital or paper? Why?
  3. What hasn't worked for you in the past? What are you curious to try again?
  4. What are we missing? What else would you like to see on calendaring?

Let us know!

-- Brittany

Neurodiverse nerds. Calendar tamers. Weekly review enthusiasts.